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United States7483 Posts
On September 27 2011 10:09 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 09:56 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 09:37 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 09:28 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 09:17 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 09:06 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 08:16 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 07:44 jbee wrote:
I hate politics, but isn't Ron Paul the guy that wants to remove ( not lower but remove) minimum wage? Usually I suspend layman's judgement, but how the hell does that benefit the poor? Economically speaking it heavily benefits the poor... overall. By reducing unemployment. Many companies can't afford to employ very many people in the U.S. due to minimum wage, and thus will move jobs abroad. An abolished minimum wage would almost assuredly create a TON of jobs in the U.S., significantly helping those who are unemployed, while simultaneously hurting those who already have jobs. The net result is always that the overall social welfare is larger, but it's more complicated than that. I'm not a supporter of the abolishment of minimum wage anyways, but I think it is a little on the high side at the moment. And as I said before, I don't think you should be able to raise a family on minimum wage. If you think you should be able to raise children as well as provide for yourself while affording food, housing, transportation, clothing, etc. for your children on a single job wages by doing something that requires almost no critical thinking and can easily be replaced doing, I think you're crazy. On September 27 2011 07:59 Bibdy wrote:
No, we're trying to solve the problem of everyone facing debt as a result of the burst by offering a combination of
A) continued low taxes for the wealthy, to incentivize creating jobs here and
B) low interest rates for investors to borrow the money they need to open the businesses they want to open
C) low interest rates for 'common folk' to reduce the burden of their existing bills by lowering their costs each payment, and to borrow what they need to keep going
All of this is predicated on the assumption that the country isn't going to go spiraling out of control and sink into the depths of R'lyeh any time soon.
It's ONLY a bad time to invest if you're sure the country is going to go into a second recession. The mere MENTION of a double-dip recession has been enough to spook these people out of investing and, as previously mentioned, it's now become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is what I mean; the ENTIRE system operates on faith. And the only things that can control the herd-like decisions of the wealthy, is other wealthy people and government incentive. When a few of them catch wind that maybe, JUST MAYBE, the US could go through a second recession, everyone turtles up and awaits the coming storm until its safe to come out - a storm caused by the turtling up.
What in the nine hells did Clinton, or his administration, have to do with banking institutions picking up, repackaging and trading bad loans and mortgages? It was a completely new and unprecedented piece of financial magic. Not even the next 8 years of the next administration saw it coming when they foolishly kept low taxes rates through the boom of 2002-2007 (they should have been risen to pay back some of the existing national debt we used to SPUR that boom in the first place - the other half of Keynesian economics that gets routinely ignored by administrations on both sides).
You can't blame any administration for that. If anything, the one lesson to learn, that should be abundantly clear, is that completely unregulated business practices like that are HORRIFICALLY dangerous for everyone. The less regulated the market gets, the more volatile it gets. I don't know how that couldn't be more obvious following that financial crisis. I'm just as confused as to why someone would continue to think that the free market is infallible following that. I really dislike how people say "low taxes for the wealthy." I mean, they aren't low taxes for the wealthy, they're actually substantially (imo) higher than that of the rest. You can speak relatively, but once again I think it's a terrible argument to point to other countries in comparison. Rather, you should be saying a) Keeping tax rates only marginally (as I'd presume you'd put it) higher than the poor for your first point. I know you said "low" and not "lower" but it's very much so implied by a lot of people that rich people pay less, whether it be an absolute value or percentage, when it's clearly not the case. They most certainly are low taxes for the wealthy. While the exact precise amount they pay is a good deal higher than the poor, the relative amount they pay is quite a bit lower, especially considering the absurd amounts of wealth they have. They can easily afford to pay a much MUCH bigger share than they currently do without even having a noticeable impact on their lifestyle, but that fact seems to escape people. They'd still be extremely wealthy, I'm not advocating communism here. Should wealth one already possesses be related to their income tax, though? If someone has 1billion dollars, and made $50,000 in income last year, they should be paying in that tax bracket, irrelevant of their 1 billion. I don't see how they pay a relatively lower amount, whatsoever. They pay a relatively higher amount of their income for income taxes? I'm not sure where you define "absurdly wealthy" either. Someone making say $400,000 per year, while definitely now falling into upper class, having a stayhome wife and say four kids, is still going to have a mortgage, and most likely won't be able to afford driving a Ferrari or some shit. Sure, those that are EXTREMELY wealthy, like those making say $3 million+ per year, might not take as much of a hit, but then they're also paying in over a million dollars in taxes of that three million (well, at least in CA, accounting for state income taxes). I don't know how you don't think that's a huge amount, when it's a third of their income. It's not like they didn't earn that income. I'd say almost everyone making a $100,000 salary is working significantly harder than those making minimum wage. At that point, your decisions matter, jobs are in your hands, profits of the company are highly relevant to your personal choices (exception of huge corps), significantly more stress involved in terms of decision making, far higher prerequisites and investment to obtain said job in the first place, etc. On September 27 2011 09:10 jbee wrote:
@kiarip The pizza boy is gambling his job/career while the pizza parlor is gambling lost revenue (which could be entirely made-up by having somebody else cover for him). If you don't see the imbalance in that then I have nothing more to say.
@fabled I don't think they should or shouldn't, as I am morally nihilistic. People want different things out of the government which means it is like arguing about taste ( hence why I hate politics). I only asked about this because I couldn't think of any reason somebody would support this, unless they owned a business. What i said was as example of if it was removed. If it was removed, pay wouldn't go to a dollar an hour, but it gives the ability for your employer to undercut you. This ability decreases the stability in the Poors' income which is why I can't see it as good for the poor either. Without government protection you're also far more likely to be a more productive worker for fear of losing your job. If you're valuable to the company, said company will be far less likely to attempt to undercut you because they value your labor. Of course, generalizing sweeps across the board may effect you if you're a small person in a massive company, but isn't it that company's choice on how it wants to run itself? That's the theory at least, I personally agree with you that job stability is decently more important, as even amazing work ethic won't always save you from individually getting screwed. I was careful to mention that I meant the top 2% of the wealth bracket qualifies as 'super rich'. I also think something needs to be done about the tax system in general, I don't believe income taxes in and of them themselves are sufficient, simply by design. Long term capital gains, for example, are taxed too low. The current system has the wealth accumulated all at the top: almost all of it, and more of it keeps going up there, rather than being spread out. The distribution of wealth is INCREDIBLY uneven. While I'm not suggesting we attempt to make it perfectly distributed so that everyone has a fair share of wealth relative to their actual income, the system should not have half of the entire country with a net total of one fiftieth of the total wealth. Oops, I must have missed your 2% quotation, I didn't go back and read your posts, but I've only been glancing over things at this point so I'm sure you're right. Regardless, even if you say taxes on the rich are low, they are still higher in both absolute and relative numbers to the poor. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.
Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need. I don't understand the sentiment whatsoever that "the rich aren't paying their fair share." They're paying almost the entire share, and relying on them soley isn't feasible anyways. As the article continues But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion. And these numbers don't even mention the fact that a ton of that money paid in by the rich is being directly given back to the poor as handouts. I think the answer comes with needing to cut spending, heavily. Preferably starting with the military. On September 27 2011 09:28 Whitewing wrote:
Current unemployment rates have less to do with cost of employment than it does with demand for production btw. People aren't hiring because there isn't enough demand for their products, so there's no reason to hire to increase production. Make employment cheaper --> product comes out cheaper --> demand increases because people can now afford product with their lower amount of money in their possession. Not to mention jobs relocating to the U.S. means money is staying here, etc. Making employment cheaper by lowering wages means people don't have money to buy even cheaper products. If you can lower the cost of employment in some way other than lowering wages, then by all means. If I have $100 to pay my employees, and they each get paid $10, I can hire 10 employees. If I reduce their pay to $5, then I can hire $20 employees, but I'm still only paying a net of $100. Production may go up, a bit, although labor saturation is an issue. But an increase in production is irrelevant if the consumers don't have the money to purchase the products, thus giving me no incentive to hire additional workers. Instead, I'll just lower their wages and keep $50 for myself, increasing my profits the easy way. But that's not how it works at all in economics. First of all, it's going to be more beneficial for 20 people to have $5 than 10 people to have $10. I'm not arguing that having a good distribution of wealth is bad, it's definitely good, it's just the means to achieve it is questionable. In this scenario, it happens through private contracts between people = good. However, the more likely scenario is your second scenario, where you keep the 10 people and pay them half as much (or maybe you hire 1-2 more people, but for simplicity sake we'll keep it even). You can't simply lower wages and keep $50 for yourself, everything about the free market screams that won't happen. Because what will happen is that your competitor will lower his prices due to decreasing costs while you keep yours similar, meaning you'll lose out completely to your competitor in terms of business. So you HAVE to lower your prices, it's utterly ridiculous to assume you could profit off that $50 difference. And as prices have now dropped, it benefits every other consumer that ISN'T an employee by dropping their costs, which is an easy net positive for society. Not to mention that the scenario is more likely that the company had 10 employees in the U.S., and 50 abroad, and due to the changes in employment it now fires 20 people in Thailand and hires 20 people here, thus employing 30 people in the U.S. that are all making $5 an hour, meaning there's now $150 in the hands of consumers rather than $100, another positive gain.
You're assuming perfect competition. In real life, perfect competition is very rare, and many industries are oligopolies. Collusion is also a huge problem. If you think it isn't, you're deluding yourself.
At any rate, we've gotten way off track, let's get back to the candidates.
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Regarding minimum wage:
Libertarians don't argue from pragmatism, they argue from principles and ideals.
If two people want to engage in an exchange which harms no one else, then the government should never intervene. That's kind of a primary principle of libertarian beliefs.
If the transaction is voluntary on both sides, then both parties have considered the action to be mutually beneficial. So long as they are not harming any third party, the government has no right to step in and stop their transaction.
This is the rational for legalizing marijuana, prostitution, and eliminating minimum wage, among other things. Don't try to tell them about possible negative externalities from poverty in general. First of all, this is a very elusive and undefined kind of harm which does not directly harm any individual. They don't believe that the societal benefits gained are worth the loss of liberty that would result from the government punishing victimless crimes.
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On September 27 2011 10:13 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 10:03 Kiarip wrote:On September 27 2011 09:56 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 09:37 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 09:28 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 09:17 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 09:06 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 08:16 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 07:44 jbee wrote:
I hate politics, but isn't Ron Paul the guy that wants to remove ( not lower but remove) minimum wage? Usually I suspend layman's judgement, but how the hell does that benefit the poor? Economically speaking it heavily benefits the poor... overall. By reducing unemployment. Many companies can't afford to employ very many people in the U.S. due to minimum wage, and thus will move jobs abroad. An abolished minimum wage would almost assuredly create a TON of jobs in the U.S., significantly helping those who are unemployed, while simultaneously hurting those who already have jobs. The net result is always that the overall social welfare is larger, but it's more complicated than that. I'm not a supporter of the abolishment of minimum wage anyways, but I think it is a little on the high side at the moment. And as I said before, I don't think you should be able to raise a family on minimum wage. If you think you should be able to raise children as well as provide for yourself while affording food, housing, transportation, clothing, etc. for your children on a single job wages by doing something that requires almost no critical thinking and can easily be replaced doing, I think you're crazy. On September 27 2011 07:59 Bibdy wrote:
No, we're trying to solve the problem of everyone facing debt as a result of the burst by offering a combination of
A) continued low taxes for the wealthy, to incentivize creating jobs here and
B) low interest rates for investors to borrow the money they need to open the businesses they want to open
C) low interest rates for 'common folk' to reduce the burden of their existing bills by lowering their costs each payment, and to borrow what they need to keep going
All of this is predicated on the assumption that the country isn't going to go spiraling out of control and sink into the depths of R'lyeh any time soon.
It's ONLY a bad time to invest if you're sure the country is going to go into a second recession. The mere MENTION of a double-dip recession has been enough to spook these people out of investing and, as previously mentioned, it's now become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is what I mean; the ENTIRE system operates on faith. And the only things that can control the herd-like decisions of the wealthy, is other wealthy people and government incentive. When a few of them catch wind that maybe, JUST MAYBE, the US could go through a second recession, everyone turtles up and awaits the coming storm until its safe to come out - a storm caused by the turtling up.
What in the nine hells did Clinton, or his administration, have to do with banking institutions picking up, repackaging and trading bad loans and mortgages? It was a completely new and unprecedented piece of financial magic. Not even the next 8 years of the next administration saw it coming when they foolishly kept low taxes rates through the boom of 2002-2007 (they should have been risen to pay back some of the existing national debt we used to SPUR that boom in the first place - the other half of Keynesian economics that gets routinely ignored by administrations on both sides).
You can't blame any administration for that. If anything, the one lesson to learn, that should be abundantly clear, is that completely unregulated business practices like that are HORRIFICALLY dangerous for everyone. The less regulated the market gets, the more volatile it gets. I don't know how that couldn't be more obvious following that financial crisis. I'm just as confused as to why someone would continue to think that the free market is infallible following that. I really dislike how people say "low taxes for the wealthy." I mean, they aren't low taxes for the wealthy, they're actually substantially (imo) higher than that of the rest. You can speak relatively, but once again I think it's a terrible argument to point to other countries in comparison. Rather, you should be saying a) Keeping tax rates only marginally (as I'd presume you'd put it) higher than the poor for your first point. I know you said "low" and not "lower" but it's very much so implied by a lot of people that rich people pay less, whether it be an absolute value or percentage, when it's clearly not the case. They most certainly are low taxes for the wealthy. While the exact precise amount they pay is a good deal higher than the poor, the relative amount they pay is quite a bit lower, especially considering the absurd amounts of wealth they have. They can easily afford to pay a much MUCH bigger share than they currently do without even having a noticeable impact on their lifestyle, but that fact seems to escape people. They'd still be extremely wealthy, I'm not advocating communism here. Should wealth one already possesses be related to their income tax, though? If someone has 1billion dollars, and made $50,000 in income last year, they should be paying in that tax bracket, irrelevant of their 1 billion. I don't see how they pay a relatively lower amount, whatsoever. They pay a relatively higher amount of their income for income taxes? I'm not sure where you define "absurdly wealthy" either. Someone making say $400,000 per year, while definitely now falling into upper class, having a stayhome wife and say four kids, is still going to have a mortgage, and most likely won't be able to afford driving a Ferrari or some shit. Sure, those that are EXTREMELY wealthy, like those making say $3 million+ per year, might not take as much of a hit, but then they're also paying in over a million dollars in taxes of that three million (well, at least in CA, accounting for state income taxes). I don't know how you don't think that's a huge amount, when it's a third of their income. It's not like they didn't earn that income. I'd say almost everyone making a $100,000 salary is working significantly harder than those making minimum wage. At that point, your decisions matter, jobs are in your hands, profits of the company are highly relevant to your personal choices (exception of huge corps), significantly more stress involved in terms of decision making, far higher prerequisites and investment to obtain said job in the first place, etc. On September 27 2011 09:10 jbee wrote:
@kiarip The pizza boy is gambling his job/career while the pizza parlor is gambling lost revenue (which could be entirely made-up by having somebody else cover for him). If you don't see the imbalance in that then I have nothing more to say.
@fabled I don't think they should or shouldn't, as I am morally nihilistic. People want different things out of the government which means it is like arguing about taste ( hence why I hate politics). I only asked about this because I couldn't think of any reason somebody would support this, unless they owned a business. What i said was as example of if it was removed. If it was removed, pay wouldn't go to a dollar an hour, but it gives the ability for your employer to undercut you. This ability decreases the stability in the Poors' income which is why I can't see it as good for the poor either. Without government protection you're also far more likely to be a more productive worker for fear of losing your job. If you're valuable to the company, said company will be far less likely to attempt to undercut you because they value your labor. Of course, generalizing sweeps across the board may effect you if you're a small person in a massive company, but isn't it that company's choice on how it wants to run itself? That's the theory at least, I personally agree with you that job stability is decently more important, as even amazing work ethic won't always save you from individually getting screwed. I was careful to mention that I meant the top 2% of the wealth bracket qualifies as 'super rich'. I also think something needs to be done about the tax system in general, I don't believe income taxes in and of them themselves are sufficient, simply by design. Long term capital gains, for example, are taxed too low. The current system has the wealth accumulated all at the top: almost all of it, and more of it keeps going up there, rather than being spread out. The distribution of wealth is INCREDIBLY uneven. While I'm not suggesting we attempt to make it perfectly distributed so that everyone has a fair share of wealth relative to their actual income, the system should not have half of the entire country with a net total of one fiftieth of the total wealth. Oops, I must have missed your 2% quotation, I didn't go back and read your posts, but I've only been glancing over things at this point so I'm sure you're right. Regardless, even if you say taxes on the rich are low, they are still higher in both absolute and relative numbers to the poor. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.
Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need. I don't understand the sentiment whatsoever that "the rich aren't paying their fair share." They're paying almost the entire share, and relying on them soley isn't feasible anyways. As the article continues But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion. And these numbers don't even mention the fact that a ton of that money paid in by the rich is being directly given back to the poor as handouts. I think the answer comes with needing to cut spending, heavily. Preferably starting with the military. On September 27 2011 09:28 Whitewing wrote:
Current unemployment rates have less to do with cost of employment than it does with demand for production btw. People aren't hiring because there isn't enough demand for their products, so there's no reason to hire to increase production. Make employment cheaper --> product comes out cheaper --> demand increases because people can now afford product with their lower amount of money in their possession. Not to mention jobs relocating to the U.S. means money is staying here, etc. Making employment cheaper by lowering wages means people don't have money to buy even cheaper products. If you can lower the cost of employment in some way other than lowering wages, then by all means. yes... you can lower the liability... but also, more money will get paid out some more products will get bought... yes, they will be more essential type of products, but in general the total income of hte population will rise, because businesses will hire more, and the increased productivity will only lead to more growth.
Yes, there would be less unemployment, but I'm not sure how much less. By removing minimum wage, you provide the ability to lower wages, but without an incentive to actually hire (demand for production), hiring won't occur. The additional jobs that would be created would be very low paying jobs, and the net amount of money being paid out would not increase, so the result is that people who do have jobs get paid less, and some people who didn't have jobs get some very low paying jobs. I don't think that fixes anything. I should also point out that most employers don't usually give significant raises out to the low earners. If anything, they might get a raise of 50 cents after a year
there will be hiring, because if you're paying the workers less, but hire more workers you're more productive, and you can sell more goods while still making same or bigger profit by lowerin cost, then if you make more profit, you can hire even more workers, and be even more productive, driving the prices even lower, and thus making the goods available to even more people... if the goods are essential, then you will constantly have an increasing demand as you lower the cost, because like you said there's so many people that are already unemployed/employed at very low wages, that their consumption would probably definitely increase if given the chance by lower prices. You're ignoring demand again. Simply having the ability to produce additional goods is insufficient, demand has to be higher for there to be any reason to produce more. Lower costs are great and all, but that doesn't mean they'll hire more. Essential goods being cheaper would increase demand, assuming perfect competition (which is a major question in and of itself, good luck preventing collusion or monopoly here). But if your income goes down, you don't really buy more goods if the cost of goods goes down by an approximate amount. If anything, this would have the net result of less luxury goods being sold, since they are non-essential, there's no way their prices would go down from this. I'm fairly certain that lowering minimum wages would not have any net positive effect, and would probably screw a lot of people over who are already just barely eeking by. Plus, it causes more net problems: if I am willing to work for $5 an hour, but not less, they can just fire me and hire someone who will accept $4 an hour. I have no real negotiating powers without unions, which once again become extremely necessary.
Of course the demand for luxury goods go down... but tell me we have 15% unemployment what is the type of goods whose price desparately needs to be driven down?
it's the essential goods.
Like i said earlier... if you just removed all regulations, you could get all these people, put them into industry of making essential goods such as food, and pay them below minimum wage, but they would still at least be able to afford the food that they make because the supply of food will have grown...
so you're going from having a ton of unemployed people waiting for their welfare checks to people that are creating enough food to feed themselves and make it cheaper for everyone else, and possibly even export it which will help in balancing the trading deficit.
edit: also you mention oligapolies, but let's not forget that a huge reason for why they exist is that the government protects them with licenses and regulations. Remove those, and then the competition will be better.
This is the rational for legalizing marijuana, prostitution, and eliminating minimum wage, among other things. Don't try to tell them about possible negative externalities from poverty in general. First of all, this is a very elusive and undefined kind of harm which does not directly harm any individual. They don't believe that the societal benefits gained are worth the loss of liberty that would result from the government punishing victimless crimes.
i'm not sure whether you're defending marijuana staying illegal, but if you are doesn't it seem a bit off to mention pragmatism in the same post where you arguing for the war on drugs.
even if drugs do cause social harm it's not like they can be pragmatically removed from our society...
in fact drug laws empower those who are willing break the law.
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United States7483 Posts
On September 27 2011 10:16 jdseemoreglass wrote:
Regarding minimum wage:
Libertarians don't argue from pragmatism, they argue from principles and ideals.
If two people want to engage in an exchange which harms no one else, then the government should never intervene. That's kind of a primary principle of libertarian beliefs.
If the transaction is voluntary on both sides, then both parties have considered the action to be mutually beneficial. So long as they are not harming any third party, the government has no right to step in and stop their transaction.
This is the rational for legalizing marijuana, prostitution, and eliminating minimum wage, among other things. Don't try to tell them about possible negative externalities from poverty in general. First of all, this is a very elusive and undefined kind of harm which does not directly harm any individual. They don't believe that the societal benefits gained are worth the loss of liberty that would result from the government punishing victimless crimes.
Except that many transactions aren't fair or harmless transactions. If my boss came to me tomorrow and said "Hey buddy, I know you're working hard, but the company wants to hire other people, and we don't have the money for it, so we're taking half your salary to give to a new employee. If you don't like it, you have to quit, sorry." I'm massively hurt by that, and it indirectly hurts a number of other people. It's not a voluntary transaction on my part, but I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'd probably have to accept the salary cut and start looking for a new job that didn't pay such a lousy amount, but if my boss is allowed to do it, it's a good bet that every other boss is doing it now too.
I'm a firm believer that everyone should have equality of opportunity (not outcome). But as long as people aren't getting it (and many people aren't), I can't support these liberatian views from principle. Once everyone has equality of opportunity, then I would be willing to consider it.
A reduction in demand for luxury goods for the lower brackets while increasing demand for essential goods has the net effect of further increasing the wealth gap. That's not a good solution. We should look for one that has the net effect of lowering the wealth gap.
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How come all the recent comments is about economic theory? Can someone link it back to the topic for me please?
Also back to the original topic... Who's front runner right now? Why isn't McCain running? That man was a hero. I'd vote for him again.
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On September 27 2011 10:22 W2 wrote:
How come all the recent comments is about economic theory? Can someone link it back to the topic for me please?
Also back to the original topic... Who's front runner right now? Why isn't McCain running? That man was a hero. I'd vote for him again.
Politics and economics are forever entwined. Discussing the candidates policies naturally leads to discussing economics. Also, discussing economic theory is more interesting then hearing people make fun of Republicans for 100+ pages.
I don't think McCain would have much chance of winning honestly. Then again, I don't think any of these people have a chance of winning. Which reminds me, I have to go search for that post with the link to the candidate that I've never heard of before, because I still have hope that there could be politicians out there that aren't worthless.
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On September 27 2011 10:21 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 10:16 jdseemoreglass wrote:
Regarding minimum wage:
Libertarians don't argue from pragmatism, they argue from principles and ideals.
If two people want to engage in an exchange which harms no one else, then the government should never intervene. That's kind of a primary principle of libertarian beliefs.
If the transaction is voluntary on both sides, then both parties have considered the action to be mutually beneficial. So long as they are not harming any third party, the government has no right to step in and stop their transaction.
This is the rational for legalizing marijuana, prostitution, and eliminating minimum wage, among other things. Don't try to tell them about possible negative externalities from poverty in general. First of all, this is a very elusive and undefined kind of harm which does not directly harm any individual. They don't believe that the societal benefits gained are worth the loss of liberty that would result from the government punishing victimless crimes. Except that many transactions aren't fair or harmless transactions. If my boss came to me tomorrow and said "Hey buddy, I know you're working hard, but the company wants to hire other people, and we don't have the money for it, so we're taking half your salary to give to a new employee. If you don't like it, you have to quit, sorry." I'm massively hurt by that, and it indirectly hurts a number of other people. It's not a voluntary transaction on my part, but I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'd probably have to accept the salary cut and start looking for a new job that didn't pay such a lousy amount, but if my boss is allowed to do it, it's a good bet that every other boss is doing it now too. I'm a firm believer that everyone should have equality of opportunity (not outcome). But as long as people aren't getting it (and many people aren't), I can't support these liberatian views from principle. Once everyone has equality of opportunity, then I would be willing to consider it.
well if you're in a contract he can't do that. but the only reason he would do that if he thinks you're not worth the pay you're getting which probably isn't true, because then he would have fired way before anyways...
Also if your skill is in demand and you have a competitive advantage over others he won't do this.
If you don't have a competitive advantage over others that are unemployed them explain to me the fairness of you having the job and him not?
if you both are completely identical in terms of beign able to contribute to the company how come you have a job and he doesn't? that doesn't necessarily sound like equal opportunity.
Skills are also subject to supply and demand.
in fact removing the minimum wage law would make it more fair, because if you do something that 15% of the currently unemployed population can do just as well as you (this is extremely unlikely because you have job experience, and etc.) why should you be the one with the job? out of those 15% of people there can be a large number of people with exactly the same skillset as yours (not talking about YOU in particular obviously... talking about a low skilled worker obviously.)
hell you may be bringing in more profit than what you're getting paid, but if there's a ton of people who are willing to do the same for less why SHOULDN'T they have your job...?
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United States7483 Posts
On September 27 2011 10:30 Kiarip wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 10:21 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 10:16 jdseemoreglass wrote:
Regarding minimum wage:
Libertarians don't argue from pragmatism, they argue from principles and ideals.
If two people want to engage in an exchange which harms no one else, then the government should never intervene. That's kind of a primary principle of libertarian beliefs.
If the transaction is voluntary on both sides, then both parties have considered the action to be mutually beneficial. So long as they are not harming any third party, the government has no right to step in and stop their transaction.
This is the rational for legalizing marijuana, prostitution, and eliminating minimum wage, among other things. Don't try to tell them about possible negative externalities from poverty in general. First of all, this is a very elusive and undefined kind of harm which does not directly harm any individual. They don't believe that the societal benefits gained are worth the loss of liberty that would result from the government punishing victimless crimes. Except that many transactions aren't fair or harmless transactions. If my boss came to me tomorrow and said "Hey buddy, I know you're working hard, but the company wants to hire other people, and we don't have the money for it, so we're taking half your salary to give to a new employee. If you don't like it, you have to quit, sorry." I'm massively hurt by that, and it indirectly hurts a number of other people. It's not a voluntary transaction on my part, but I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'd probably have to accept the salary cut and start looking for a new job that didn't pay such a lousy amount, but if my boss is allowed to do it, it's a good bet that every other boss is doing it now too. I'm a firm believer that everyone should have equality of opportunity (not outcome). But as long as people aren't getting it (and many people aren't), I can't support these liberatian views from principle. Once everyone has equality of opportunity, then I would be willing to consider it. well if you're in a contract he can't do that. but the only reason he would do that if he thinks you're not worth the pay you're getting which probably isn't true, because then he would have fired way before anyways... Also if your skill is in demand and you have a competitive advantage over others he won't do this. If you don't have a competitive advantage over others that are unemployed them explain to me the fairness of you having the job and him not? if you both are completely identical in terms of beign able to contribute to the company how come you have a job and he doesn't? that doesn't necessarily sound like equal opportunity. Skills are also subject to supply and demand. in fact removing the minimum wage law would make it more fair, because if you do something that 15% of the currently unemployed population can do just as well as you (this is extremely unlikely because you have job experience, and etc.) why should you be the one with the job? out of those 15% of people there can be a large number of people with exactly the same skillset as yours (not talking about YOU in particular obviously... talking about a low skilled worker obviously.) hell you may be bringing in more profit than what you're getting paid, but if there's a ton of people who are willing to do the same for less why SHOULDN'T they have your job...?
You're working under the assumption that employers always pay what they think their employees are worth. If they can get away with paying less, I assure you they will. They pay the amount they do because they are worried about you getting paid more somewhere else: but if everyone is lowering the values they pay in the industry because they are no longer required to pay a certain amount, all of the sudden you're boned. Collusion is a serious problem.
I'll agree with your stance once everyone has equality of opportunity, and we figure out a way to stop collusion and prevent monopolies.
As for why they shouldn't get my job: perhaps I need more money to support my family than they do. Maybe (as an example) I've got 4 kids to support as a single parent, and if someone else who only has to support himself can take my job for less money, I'm screwed.
Maybe you don't care about equity for people: maybe you don't think that someone who is hardworking and does their best deserves to be able to support himself, but I do.
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On September 27 2011 10:21 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 10:16 jdseemoreglass wrote:
Regarding minimum wage:
Libertarians don't argue from pragmatism, they argue from principles and ideals.
If two people want to engage in an exchange which harms no one else, then the government should never intervene. That's kind of a primary principle of libertarian beliefs.
If the transaction is voluntary on both sides, then both parties have considered the action to be mutually beneficial. So long as they are not harming any third party, the government has no right to step in and stop their transaction.
This is the rational for legalizing marijuana, prostitution, and eliminating minimum wage, among other things. Don't try to tell them about possible negative externalities from poverty in general. First of all, this is a very elusive and undefined kind of harm which does not directly harm any individual. They don't believe that the societal benefits gained are worth the loss of liberty that would result from the government punishing victimless crimes. Except that many transactions aren't fair or harmless transactions. If my boss came to me tomorrow and said "Hey buddy, I know you're working hard, but the company wants to hire other people, and we don't have the money for it, so we're taking half your salary to give to a new employee. If you don't like it, you have to quit, sorry." I'm massively hurt by that, and it indirectly hurts a number of other people. It's not a voluntary transaction on my part, but I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'd probably have to accept the salary cut and start looking for a new job that didn't pay such a lousy amount, but if my boss is allowed to do it, it's a good bet that every other boss is doing it now too. I'm a firm believer that everyone should have equality of opportunity (not outcome). But as long as people aren't getting it (and many people aren't), I can't support these liberatian views from principle. Once everyone has equality of opportunity, then I would be willing to consider it. A reduction in demand for luxury goods for the lower brackets while increasing demand for essential goods has the net effect of further increasing the wealth gap. That's not a good solution. We should look for one that has the net effect of lowering the wealth gap.
I really don't understand your argument...
Are you suggesting that the government should somehow prevent people from getting fired? Even with minimum wage laws it doesn't prevent any boss from firing any employee.
Also, in your example, your boss was firing you in order to hire someone for half the wage. This means they have enough money left over to potentially hire another employee at the same wage, thereby doubling their productivity and employing twice as many people. Also, the people taking the jobs for half your wage are probably lower income, so by getting fired you are improving the conditions of the poor. 
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United States7483 Posts
On September 27 2011 10:39 jdseemoreglass wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 10:21 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 10:16 jdseemoreglass wrote:
Regarding minimum wage:
Libertarians don't argue from pragmatism, they argue from principles and ideals.
If two people want to engage in an exchange which harms no one else, then the government should never intervene. That's kind of a primary principle of libertarian beliefs.
If the transaction is voluntary on both sides, then both parties have considered the action to be mutually beneficial. So long as they are not harming any third party, the government has no right to step in and stop their transaction.
This is the rational for legalizing marijuana, prostitution, and eliminating minimum wage, among other things. Don't try to tell them about possible negative externalities from poverty in general. First of all, this is a very elusive and undefined kind of harm which does not directly harm any individual. They don't believe that the societal benefits gained are worth the loss of liberty that would result from the government punishing victimless crimes. Except that many transactions aren't fair or harmless transactions. If my boss came to me tomorrow and said "Hey buddy, I know you're working hard, but the company wants to hire other people, and we don't have the money for it, so we're taking half your salary to give to a new employee. If you don't like it, you have to quit, sorry." I'm massively hurt by that, and it indirectly hurts a number of other people. It's not a voluntary transaction on my part, but I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'd probably have to accept the salary cut and start looking for a new job that didn't pay such a lousy amount, but if my boss is allowed to do it, it's a good bet that every other boss is doing it now too. I'm a firm believer that everyone should have equality of opportunity (not outcome). But as long as people aren't getting it (and many people aren't), I can't support these liberatian views from principle. Once everyone has equality of opportunity, then I would be willing to consider it. A reduction in demand for luxury goods for the lower brackets while increasing demand for essential goods has the net effect of further increasing the wealth gap. That's not a good solution. We should look for one that has the net effect of lowering the wealth gap. I really don't understand your argument... Are you suggesting that the government should somehow prevent people from getting fired? Even with minimum wage laws it doesn't prevent any boss from firing any employee. Also, in your example, your boss was firing you in order to hire someone for half the wage. This means they have enough money left over to potentially hire another employee at the same wage, thereby doubling their productivity and employing twice as many people. Also, the people taking the jobs for half your wage are probably lower income, so by getting fired you are improving the conditions of the poor.
In much Europe, there are a lot of employee protection laws in place. If you are a foul-up you can be fired, but if you're a competent worker, you don't get laid off or fired just because they want to pay you less. There are actually a lot of restrictions on employers about what steps they have to take before being allowed to reduce an employee's pay or lay off an employee.
Yes, he's hiring someone else, but I never mentioned what the value of my salary was, which makes the rest of your argument kind of fallacious.
But my argument was simple: if you remove restrictions and regulations on the market, the natural course for the market to take is for people in power to abuse their power as much as possible and to try to earn the largest profit as possible, which really sucks for your average person who isn't in power. This occurs because perfect competition doesn't really exist in the real world. Some industries get close, but most don't.
No, I do not have faith in an unregulated free market, nor do I believe that "greed works."
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On September 27 2011 10:34 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 10:30 Kiarip wrote:On September 27 2011 10:21 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 10:16 jdseemoreglass wrote:
Regarding minimum wage:
Libertarians don't argue from pragmatism, they argue from principles and ideals.
If two people want to engage in an exchange which harms no one else, then the government should never intervene. That's kind of a primary principle of libertarian beliefs.
If the transaction is voluntary on both sides, then both parties have considered the action to be mutually beneficial. So long as they are not harming any third party, the government has no right to step in and stop their transaction.
This is the rational for legalizing marijuana, prostitution, and eliminating minimum wage, among other things. Don't try to tell them about possible negative externalities from poverty in general. First of all, this is a very elusive and undefined kind of harm which does not directly harm any individual. They don't believe that the societal benefits gained are worth the loss of liberty that would result from the government punishing victimless crimes. Except that many transactions aren't fair or harmless transactions. If my boss came to me tomorrow and said "Hey buddy, I know you're working hard, but the company wants to hire other people, and we don't have the money for it, so we're taking half your salary to give to a new employee. If you don't like it, you have to quit, sorry." I'm massively hurt by that, and it indirectly hurts a number of other people. It's not a voluntary transaction on my part, but I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'd probably have to accept the salary cut and start looking for a new job that didn't pay such a lousy amount, but if my boss is allowed to do it, it's a good bet that every other boss is doing it now too. I'm a firm believer that everyone should have equality of opportunity (not outcome). But as long as people aren't getting it (and many people aren't), I can't support these liberatian views from principle. Once everyone has equality of opportunity, then I would be willing to consider it. well if you're in a contract he can't do that. but the only reason he would do that if he thinks you're not worth the pay you're getting which probably isn't true, because then he would have fired way before anyways... Also if your skill is in demand and you have a competitive advantage over others he won't do this. If you don't have a competitive advantage over others that are unemployed them explain to me the fairness of you having the job and him not? if you both are completely identical in terms of beign able to contribute to the company how come you have a job and he doesn't? that doesn't necessarily sound like equal opportunity. Skills are also subject to supply and demand. in fact removing the minimum wage law would make it more fair, because if you do something that 15% of the currently unemployed population can do just as well as you (this is extremely unlikely because you have job experience, and etc.) why should you be the one with the job? out of those 15% of people there can be a large number of people with exactly the same skillset as yours (not talking about YOU in particular obviously... talking about a low skilled worker obviously.) hell you may be bringing in more profit than what you're getting paid, but if there's a ton of people who are willing to do the same for less why SHOULDN'T they have your job...? You're working under the assumption that employers always pay what they think their employees are worth. If they can get away with paying less, I assure you they will. They pay the amount they do because they are worried about you getting paid more somewhere else: but if everyone is lowering the values they pay in the industry because they are no longer required to pay a certain amount, all of the sudden you're boned. Collusion is a serious problem.
first of all collusion isn't a huge problem at least not amongst small businesses. you're right though that the wages will drop rapidly... but as they drop rapidly, suddenly there will be way more people willing to hire...
you're saying people will be working for almost nothing, but when they are doign that don't you think that there will be tons of people that are willing to hire people to work for almost nothing? The wages won't drop that low, because while there's still capital in the private sector, if the wages drop so drastically, there will be a competition for labor force, which will push the wages up until the marginal profit per worker is minimal, but existent. It's basic supply and demand.
I'll agree with your stance once everyone has equality of opportunity, and we figure out a way to stop collusion and prevent monopolies.
when a lot of small businesses are popping up collusion isn't a huge problem because collusion itself will be pretty hard/expensive for a large number of businesses to establish, since it requires a large portion of the market to agree.
Also while the wages are super low like you say, the businesses that aren't colluded will outcompete those that are. Monopolies will only come up when cost of employment is not longer super cheap, and even then monopolies can often times be solved simply through allowing free trade with other nations. Most monopolies in history have had to be propped up by government support through regulations.
As for why they shouldn't get my job: perhaps I need more money to support my family than they do. Maybe (as an example) I've got 4 kids to support as a single parent, and if someone else who only has to support himself can take my job for less money, I'm screwed.
Maybe you don't care about equity for people: maybe you don't think that someone who is hardworking and does their best deserves to be able to support himself, but I do.
There's a difference between supporting yourself and supporting yourself and 4 kids. There's tons of stuff I can do to make it impossible for myself to support myself. I can cut off my arms and then i'll be pretty useless since i won't even be able to type, but after i do that if i'm very hard working do you i think i still should be able to support myself?
what if i hit my head on the wall until im mentally retarded, and then i become super hard working should i be able to support myself then?
Your example of needing the money more can backfire jsut as easily. what if theres someone who doesn't need the money as much and has the job and the other guy needs it more but has equal skills and is unemployed... what then? how is that fair?
and the overall problem with whoever needing the job most getting it, is then people can just start having tons of kids for that reason alone or can start running up huge debts, and claim that they need the money the most to pay off debts/pay for kids...
there needs to be real fair incentive to work and to hire.
every time you protect the employee, you're both creating a liability for the employer, and make it tougher on the unemployed. If anything minimum wage is immoral.
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On September 27 2011 10:13 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 10:03 Kiarip wrote:On September 27 2011 09:56 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 09:37 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 09:28 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 09:17 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 09:06 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 08:16 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 07:44 jbee wrote:
I hate politics, but isn't Ron Paul the guy that wants to remove ( not lower but remove) minimum wage? Usually I suspend layman's judgement, but how the hell does that benefit the poor? Economically speaking it heavily benefits the poor... overall. By reducing unemployment. Many companies can't afford to employ very many people in the U.S. due to minimum wage, and thus will move jobs abroad. An abolished minimum wage would almost assuredly create a TON of jobs in the U.S., significantly helping those who are unemployed, while simultaneously hurting those who already have jobs. The net result is always that the overall social welfare is larger, but it's more complicated than that. I'm not a supporter of the abolishment of minimum wage anyways, but I think it is a little on the high side at the moment. And as I said before, I don't think you should be able to raise a family on minimum wage. If you think you should be able to raise children as well as provide for yourself while affording food, housing, transportation, clothing, etc. for your children on a single job wages by doing something that requires almost no critical thinking and can easily be replaced doing, I think you're crazy. On September 27 2011 07:59 Bibdy wrote:
No, we're trying to solve the problem of everyone facing debt as a result of the burst by offering a combination of
A) continued low taxes for the wealthy, to incentivize creating jobs here and
B) low interest rates for investors to borrow the money they need to open the businesses they want to open
C) low interest rates for 'common folk' to reduce the burden of their existing bills by lowering their costs each payment, and to borrow what they need to keep going
All of this is predicated on the assumption that the country isn't going to go spiraling out of control and sink into the depths of R'lyeh any time soon.
It's ONLY a bad time to invest if you're sure the country is going to go into a second recession. The mere MENTION of a double-dip recession has been enough to spook these people out of investing and, as previously mentioned, it's now become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is what I mean; the ENTIRE system operates on faith. And the only things that can control the herd-like decisions of the wealthy, is other wealthy people and government incentive. When a few of them catch wind that maybe, JUST MAYBE, the US could go through a second recession, everyone turtles up and awaits the coming storm until its safe to come out - a storm caused by the turtling up.
What in the nine hells did Clinton, or his administration, have to do with banking institutions picking up, repackaging and trading bad loans and mortgages? It was a completely new and unprecedented piece of financial magic. Not even the next 8 years of the next administration saw it coming when they foolishly kept low taxes rates through the boom of 2002-2007 (they should have been risen to pay back some of the existing national debt we used to SPUR that boom in the first place - the other half of Keynesian economics that gets routinely ignored by administrations on both sides).
You can't blame any administration for that. If anything, the one lesson to learn, that should be abundantly clear, is that completely unregulated business practices like that are HORRIFICALLY dangerous for everyone. The less regulated the market gets, the more volatile it gets. I don't know how that couldn't be more obvious following that financial crisis. I'm just as confused as to why someone would continue to think that the free market is infallible following that. I really dislike how people say "low taxes for the wealthy." I mean, they aren't low taxes for the wealthy, they're actually substantially (imo) higher than that of the rest. You can speak relatively, but once again I think it's a terrible argument to point to other countries in comparison. Rather, you should be saying a) Keeping tax rates only marginally (as I'd presume you'd put it) higher than the poor for your first point. I know you said "low" and not "lower" but it's very much so implied by a lot of people that rich people pay less, whether it be an absolute value or percentage, when it's clearly not the case. They most certainly are low taxes for the wealthy. While the exact precise amount they pay is a good deal higher than the poor, the relative amount they pay is quite a bit lower, especially considering the absurd amounts of wealth they have. They can easily afford to pay a much MUCH bigger share than they currently do without even having a noticeable impact on their lifestyle, but that fact seems to escape people. They'd still be extremely wealthy, I'm not advocating communism here. Should wealth one already possesses be related to their income tax, though? If someone has 1billion dollars, and made $50,000 in income last year, they should be paying in that tax bracket, irrelevant of their 1 billion. I don't see how they pay a relatively lower amount, whatsoever. They pay a relatively higher amount of their income for income taxes? I'm not sure where you define "absurdly wealthy" either. Someone making say $400,000 per year, while definitely now falling into upper class, having a stayhome wife and say four kids, is still going to have a mortgage, and most likely won't be able to afford driving a Ferrari or some shit. Sure, those that are EXTREMELY wealthy, like those making say $3 million+ per year, might not take as much of a hit, but then they're also paying in over a million dollars in taxes of that three million (well, at least in CA, accounting for state income taxes). I don't know how you don't think that's a huge amount, when it's a third of their income. It's not like they didn't earn that income. I'd say almost everyone making a $100,000 salary is working significantly harder than those making minimum wage. At that point, your decisions matter, jobs are in your hands, profits of the company are highly relevant to your personal choices (exception of huge corps), significantly more stress involved in terms of decision making, far higher prerequisites and investment to obtain said job in the first place, etc. On September 27 2011 09:10 jbee wrote:
@kiarip The pizza boy is gambling his job/career while the pizza parlor is gambling lost revenue (which could be entirely made-up by having somebody else cover for him). If you don't see the imbalance in that then I have nothing more to say.
@fabled I don't think they should or shouldn't, as I am morally nihilistic. People want different things out of the government which means it is like arguing about taste ( hence why I hate politics). I only asked about this because I couldn't think of any reason somebody would support this, unless they owned a business. What i said was as example of if it was removed. If it was removed, pay wouldn't go to a dollar an hour, but it gives the ability for your employer to undercut you. This ability decreases the stability in the Poors' income which is why I can't see it as good for the poor either. Without government protection you're also far more likely to be a more productive worker for fear of losing your job. If you're valuable to the company, said company will be far less likely to attempt to undercut you because they value your labor. Of course, generalizing sweeps across the board may effect you if you're a small person in a massive company, but isn't it that company's choice on how it wants to run itself? That's the theory at least, I personally agree with you that job stability is decently more important, as even amazing work ethic won't always save you from individually getting screwed. I was careful to mention that I meant the top 2% of the wealth bracket qualifies as 'super rich'. I also think something needs to be done about the tax system in general, I don't believe income taxes in and of them themselves are sufficient, simply by design. Long term capital gains, for example, are taxed too low. The current system has the wealth accumulated all at the top: almost all of it, and more of it keeps going up there, rather than being spread out. The distribution of wealth is INCREDIBLY uneven. While I'm not suggesting we attempt to make it perfectly distributed so that everyone has a fair share of wealth relative to their actual income, the system should not have half of the entire country with a net total of one fiftieth of the total wealth. Oops, I must have missed your 2% quotation, I didn't go back and read your posts, but I've only been glancing over things at this point so I'm sure you're right. Regardless, even if you say taxes on the rich are low, they are still higher in both absolute and relative numbers to the poor. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.
Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need. I don't understand the sentiment whatsoever that "the rich aren't paying their fair share." They're paying almost the entire share, and relying on them soley isn't feasible anyways. As the article continues But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion. And these numbers don't even mention the fact that a ton of that money paid in by the rich is being directly given back to the poor as handouts. I think the answer comes with needing to cut spending, heavily. Preferably starting with the military. On September 27 2011 09:28 Whitewing wrote:
Current unemployment rates have less to do with cost of employment than it does with demand for production btw. People aren't hiring because there isn't enough demand for their products, so there's no reason to hire to increase production. Make employment cheaper --> product comes out cheaper --> demand increases because people can now afford product with their lower amount of money in their possession. Not to mention jobs relocating to the U.S. means money is staying here, etc. Making employment cheaper by lowering wages means people don't have money to buy even cheaper products. If you can lower the cost of employment in some way other than lowering wages, then by all means. yes... you can lower the liability... but also, more money will get paid out some more products will get bought... yes, they will be more essential type of products, but in general the total income of hte population will rise, because businesses will hire more, and the increased productivity will only lead to more growth.
Yes, there would be less unemployment, but I'm not sure how much less. By removing minimum wage, you provide the ability to lower wages, but without an incentive to actually hire (demand for production), hiring won't occur. The additional jobs that would be created would be very low paying jobs, and the net amount of money being paid out would not increase, so the result is that people who do have jobs get paid less, and some people who didn't have jobs get some very low paying jobs. I don't think that fixes anything. I should also point out that most employers don't usually give significant raises out to the low earners. If anything, they might get a raise of 50 cents after a year
there will be hiring, because if you're paying the workers less, but hire more workers you're more productive, and you can sell more goods while still making same or bigger profit by lowerin cost, then if you make more profit, you can hire even more workers, and be even more productive, driving the prices even lower, and thus making the goods available to even more people... if the goods are essential, then you will constantly have an increasing demand as you lower the cost, because like you said there's so many people that are already unemployed/employed at very low wages, that their consumption would probably definitely increase if given the chance by lower prices. You're ignoring demand again. Simply having the ability to produce additional goods is insufficient, demand has to be higher for there to be any reason to produce more. Lower costs are great and all, but that doesn't mean they'll hire more. Essential goods being cheaper would increase demand, assuming perfect competition (which is a major question in and of itself, good luck preventing collusion or monopoly here). But if your income goes down, you don't really buy more goods if the cost of goods goes down by an approximate amount. If anything, this would have the net result of less luxury goods being sold, since they are non-essential, there's no way their prices would go down from this. I'm fairly certain that lowering minimum wages would not have any net positive effect, and would probably screw a lot of people over who are already just barely eeking by. Plus, it causes more net problems: if I am willing to work for $5 an hour, but not less, they can just fire me and hire someone who will accept $4 an hour. I have no real negotiating powers without unions, which once again become extremely necessary.
First, a 0.50 raise on a $5/hr job is a 10% increase which is fucking huge, so I'm not sure how you can say it's small. It's still pretty big on a $10/hr wage, which is 50% more than minimum, at a 5% increase. How you can trivialize companies paying out 5-10% out more per year per worker is beyond me. It really surprises me as well you can fathom that lowering minimum wages would not have a positive net effect on the economy, nearly all economic theory points to it having a very positive effect. Sure, it can fuck a lot of people in the process, but net effect?
I also don't know where you keep going on this demand thing. Demand will only rise as prices become cheaper. Also, as more jobs move to the U.S., more money is in the hands of U.S. consumers. Like I said previously, a more accurate scenario is that a company has 10 people here, 50 in Thailand, fires 20 in Thailand and hires 20 more here, meaning 30 people are employed at lower wages compared to the 10 that were previously, meaning more money being spent, stimulating the economy, creating more jobs and thus raising the wages of existing workers.
To the last point, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, and you're willing to work for $5/hr, don't they deserve that job more than you? Also, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, why should the company even hire you at a more expensive pay? You shouldn't be able to live off either $4/hr or $5/hr imo (well, you could if you live extremely cheaply with roommates and no family). Since when have we come to the conclusion that you should be able to sustain yourself on any job out there in existence? Some jobs are meant to give supplemental income, not be your career, and if you're trying to make your career into a $5/hr job then that's your fault for being such a damn unappealing person to society.
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Here's an interesting inside-look article by Howard Kurtz into Roger Ailes and Fox News -- specifically how Ailes manipulates the coverage. I'm adding it to this thread because a very large portion of it deals with Fox's coverage of the republican primaries and the debates.
The article is really long, but I've quoted an excerpt below:
The left has long branded Fox a propaganda arm for Ailes’s pugnacious conservatism, and while his journalists maintain they play it straight, the network has certainly provided ample fodder for liberal detractors. But as President Obama’s popularity has plummeted and the country has grown increasingly sick of partisan sniping, something unexpected happened. Roger Ailes pulled back a bit on the throttle.
He calls it a “course correction,” quietly adopted at Fox over the last year. Glenn Beck’s inflammatory rhetoric—his ranting about Obama being a racist—“became a bit of a branding issue for us” before the hot-button host left in July, Ailes says. So too did Sarah Palin’s being widely promoted as the GOP’s potential savior—in large measure through her lucrative platform at Fox. Privately, Fox executives say the entire network took a hard right turn after Obama’s election, but, as the Tea Party’s popularity fades, is edging back toward the mainstream.
While Fox reporters ply their trade under Ailes’s much-mocked “fair and balanced” banner, the opinion arm of the operation has been told to lower the temperature. After the Gabrielle Giffords shooting triggered a debate about feverish rhetoric, Ailes ordered his troops to tone things down. It was, in his view, a chance to boost profits by grabbing a more moderate audience.
As he embarks on his last hurrah—Ailes’s contract is up in 2013—he is acting not like a political operative but as a corporate chieftain who knows that fostering friction and picking fights make for good television—and good business. Next fall’s election could well pivot on whether Ailes is more interested in scoring political points or ramping up ratings and revenue.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/25/roger-ailes-repositions-fox-news.html
Before you start flaming Fox as being biased, keep in mind that every media outlet is guilty of these types of editorial decisions.
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Canada11377 Posts
On September 27 2011 11:05 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 10:13 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 10:03 Kiarip wrote:On September 27 2011 09:56 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 09:37 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 09:28 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 09:17 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 09:06 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 08:16 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 07:44 jbee wrote:
I hate politics, but isn't Ron Paul the guy that wants to remove ( not lower but remove) minimum wage? Usually I suspend layman's judgement, but how the hell does that benefit the poor? Economically speaking it heavily benefits the poor... overall. By reducing unemployment. Many companies can't afford to employ very many people in the U.S. due to minimum wage, and thus will move jobs abroad. An abolished minimum wage would almost assuredly create a TON of jobs in the U.S., significantly helping those who are unemployed, while simultaneously hurting those who already have jobs. The net result is always that the overall social welfare is larger, but it's more complicated than that. I'm not a supporter of the abolishment of minimum wage anyways, but I think it is a little on the high side at the moment. And as I said before, I don't think you should be able to raise a family on minimum wage. If you think you should be able to raise children as well as provide for yourself while affording food, housing, transportation, clothing, etc. for your children on a single job wages by doing something that requires almost no critical thinking and can easily be replaced doing, I think you're crazy. On September 27 2011 07:59 Bibdy wrote:
No, we're trying to solve the problem of everyone facing debt as a result of the burst by offering a combination of
A) continued low taxes for the wealthy, to incentivize creating jobs here and
B) low interest rates for investors to borrow the money they need to open the businesses they want to open
C) low interest rates for 'common folk' to reduce the burden of their existing bills by lowering their costs each payment, and to borrow what they need to keep going
All of this is predicated on the assumption that the country isn't going to go spiraling out of control and sink into the depths of R'lyeh any time soon.
It's ONLY a bad time to invest if you're sure the country is going to go into a second recession. The mere MENTION of a double-dip recession has been enough to spook these people out of investing and, as previously mentioned, it's now become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is what I mean; the ENTIRE system operates on faith. And the only things that can control the herd-like decisions of the wealthy, is other wealthy people and government incentive. When a few of them catch wind that maybe, JUST MAYBE, the US could go through a second recession, everyone turtles up and awaits the coming storm until its safe to come out - a storm caused by the turtling up.
What in the nine hells did Clinton, or his administration, have to do with banking institutions picking up, repackaging and trading bad loans and mortgages? It was a completely new and unprecedented piece of financial magic. Not even the next 8 years of the next administration saw it coming when they foolishly kept low taxes rates through the boom of 2002-2007 (they should have been risen to pay back some of the existing national debt we used to SPUR that boom in the first place - the other half of Keynesian economics that gets routinely ignored by administrations on both sides).
You can't blame any administration for that. If anything, the one lesson to learn, that should be abundantly clear, is that completely unregulated business practices like that are HORRIFICALLY dangerous for everyone. The less regulated the market gets, the more volatile it gets. I don't know how that couldn't be more obvious following that financial crisis. I'm just as confused as to why someone would continue to think that the free market is infallible following that. I really dislike how people say "low taxes for the wealthy." I mean, they aren't low taxes for the wealthy, they're actually substantially (imo) higher than that of the rest. You can speak relatively, but once again I think it's a terrible argument to point to other countries in comparison. Rather, you should be saying a) Keeping tax rates only marginally (as I'd presume you'd put it) higher than the poor for your first point. I know you said "low" and not "lower" but it's very much so implied by a lot of people that rich people pay less, whether it be an absolute value or percentage, when it's clearly not the case. They most certainly are low taxes for the wealthy. While the exact precise amount they pay is a good deal higher than the poor, the relative amount they pay is quite a bit lower, especially considering the absurd amounts of wealth they have. They can easily afford to pay a much MUCH bigger share than they currently do without even having a noticeable impact on their lifestyle, but that fact seems to escape people. They'd still be extremely wealthy, I'm not advocating communism here. Should wealth one already possesses be related to their income tax, though? If someone has 1billion dollars, and made $50,000 in income last year, they should be paying in that tax bracket, irrelevant of their 1 billion. I don't see how they pay a relatively lower amount, whatsoever. They pay a relatively higher amount of their income for income taxes? I'm not sure where you define "absurdly wealthy" either. Someone making say $400,000 per year, while definitely now falling into upper class, having a stayhome wife and say four kids, is still going to have a mortgage, and most likely won't be able to afford driving a Ferrari or some shit. Sure, those that are EXTREMELY wealthy, like those making say $3 million+ per year, might not take as much of a hit, but then they're also paying in over a million dollars in taxes of that three million (well, at least in CA, accounting for state income taxes). I don't know how you don't think that's a huge amount, when it's a third of their income. It's not like they didn't earn that income. I'd say almost everyone making a $100,000 salary is working significantly harder than those making minimum wage. At that point, your decisions matter, jobs are in your hands, profits of the company are highly relevant to your personal choices (exception of huge corps), significantly more stress involved in terms of decision making, far higher prerequisites and investment to obtain said job in the first place, etc. On September 27 2011 09:10 jbee wrote:
@kiarip The pizza boy is gambling his job/career while the pizza parlor is gambling lost revenue (which could be entirely made-up by having somebody else cover for him). If you don't see the imbalance in that then I have nothing more to say.
@fabled I don't think they should or shouldn't, as I am morally nihilistic. People want different things out of the government which means it is like arguing about taste ( hence why I hate politics). I only asked about this because I couldn't think of any reason somebody would support this, unless they owned a business. What i said was as example of if it was removed. If it was removed, pay wouldn't go to a dollar an hour, but it gives the ability for your employer to undercut you. This ability decreases the stability in the Poors' income which is why I can't see it as good for the poor either. Without government protection you're also far more likely to be a more productive worker for fear of losing your job. If you're valuable to the company, said company will be far less likely to attempt to undercut you because they value your labor. Of course, generalizing sweeps across the board may effect you if you're a small person in a massive company, but isn't it that company's choice on how it wants to run itself? That's the theory at least, I personally agree with you that job stability is decently more important, as even amazing work ethic won't always save you from individually getting screwed. I was careful to mention that I meant the top 2% of the wealth bracket qualifies as 'super rich'. I also think something needs to be done about the tax system in general, I don't believe income taxes in and of them themselves are sufficient, simply by design. Long term capital gains, for example, are taxed too low. The current system has the wealth accumulated all at the top: almost all of it, and more of it keeps going up there, rather than being spread out. The distribution of wealth is INCREDIBLY uneven. While I'm not suggesting we attempt to make it perfectly distributed so that everyone has a fair share of wealth relative to their actual income, the system should not have half of the entire country with a net total of one fiftieth of the total wealth. Oops, I must have missed your 2% quotation, I didn't go back and read your posts, but I've only been glancing over things at this point so I'm sure you're right. Regardless, even if you say taxes on the rich are low, they are still higher in both absolute and relative numbers to the poor. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.
Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need. I don't understand the sentiment whatsoever that "the rich aren't paying their fair share." They're paying almost the entire share, and relying on them soley isn't feasible anyways. As the article continues But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion. And these numbers don't even mention the fact that a ton of that money paid in by the rich is being directly given back to the poor as handouts. I think the answer comes with needing to cut spending, heavily. Preferably starting with the military. On September 27 2011 09:28 Whitewing wrote:
Current unemployment rates have less to do with cost of employment than it does with demand for production btw. People aren't hiring because there isn't enough demand for their products, so there's no reason to hire to increase production. Make employment cheaper --> product comes out cheaper --> demand increases because people can now afford product with their lower amount of money in their possession. Not to mention jobs relocating to the U.S. means money is staying here, etc. Making employment cheaper by lowering wages means people don't have money to buy even cheaper products. If you can lower the cost of employment in some way other than lowering wages, then by all means. yes... you can lower the liability... but also, more money will get paid out some more products will get bought... yes, they will be more essential type of products, but in general the total income of hte population will rise, because businesses will hire more, and the increased productivity will only lead to more growth.
Yes, there would be less unemployment, but I'm not sure how much less. By removing minimum wage, you provide the ability to lower wages, but without an incentive to actually hire (demand for production), hiring won't occur. The additional jobs that would be created would be very low paying jobs, and the net amount of money being paid out would not increase, so the result is that people who do have jobs get paid less, and some people who didn't have jobs get some very low paying jobs. I don't think that fixes anything. I should also point out that most employers don't usually give significant raises out to the low earners. If anything, they might get a raise of 50 cents after a year
there will be hiring, because if you're paying the workers less, but hire more workers you're more productive, and you can sell more goods while still making same or bigger profit by lowerin cost, then if you make more profit, you can hire even more workers, and be even more productive, driving the prices even lower, and thus making the goods available to even more people... if the goods are essential, then you will constantly have an increasing demand as you lower the cost, because like you said there's so many people that are already unemployed/employed at very low wages, that their consumption would probably definitely increase if given the chance by lower prices. You're ignoring demand again. Simply having the ability to produce additional goods is insufficient, demand has to be higher for there to be any reason to produce more. Lower costs are great and all, but that doesn't mean they'll hire more. Essential goods being cheaper would increase demand, assuming perfect competition (which is a major question in and of itself, good luck preventing collusion or monopoly here). But if your income goes down, you don't really buy more goods if the cost of goods goes down by an approximate amount. If anything, this would have the net result of less luxury goods being sold, since they are non-essential, there's no way their prices would go down from this. I'm fairly certain that lowering minimum wages would not have any net positive effect, and would probably screw a lot of people over who are already just barely eeking by. Plus, it causes more net problems: if I am willing to work for $5 an hour, but not less, they can just fire me and hire someone who will accept $4 an hour. I have no real negotiating powers without unions, which once again become extremely necessary. I also don't know where you keep going on this demand thing. Demand will only rise as prices become cheaper. Also, as more jobs move to the U.S., more money is in the hands of U.S. consumers. Like I said previously, a more accurate scenario is that a company has 10 people here, 50 in Thailand, fires 20 in Thailand and hires 20 more here, meaning 30 people are employed at lower wages compared to the 10 that were previously, meaning more money being spent, stimulating the economy, creating more jobs and thus raising the wages of existing workers. To the last point, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, and you're willing to work for $5/hr, don't they deserve that job more than you? Also, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, why should the company even hire you at a more expensive pay? You shouldn't be able to live off either $4/hr or $5/hr imo (well, you could if you live extremely cheaply with roommates and no family). Since when have we come to the conclusion that you should be able to sustain yourself on any job out there in existence? Some jobs are meant to give supplemental income, not be your career, and if you're trying to make your career into a $5/hr job then that's your fault for being such a damn unappealing person to society.
I quite frankly don't get how you can ignore demand. A lot of this supply side economics (if that seems what is being argued) seems to consider the effects on only the manufacturing jobs, but in most cases I don't see why businesses would bother to hire.
Take the primary industries for example. Logging is an old boys club here in BC. Average age is 50 and I doubt they've seriously hired much for a couple decades. You could hack and slash their wages to below minimum wage and it wouldn't deal with the biggest operational costs which is the choppers they run to log. Most of the labour jobs have been replaced by technology and if you cut labour costs, the extra money is more likely to replace jobs with machines then the other way around. They don't need extra labour for what they did. And you wouldn't want to increase production all that much anyways as logging is limited by how fast the third growth is coming in/ the remaining second growth.
Now take the service industry, which is where most of the jobs are and the most devastating impact of no minimum wage. Cut labour costs in half and there's no need to hire extra minions for make work projects. The service industry will continue to run on the same amount of employees because people only need so much food and clothes want so much luxury items. A restaurant only needs so many employees, cutting employees wages in half will not suddenly make the owner want to double his staff unless the number of clientele increases (demand). Furthermore, if no minimum wage is across the board, I'd think he'd get less customers with the sudden decline in wages all over the place.
Or take a small business. A bicycle shop, let's say. Where they sell bikes and parts and repair old ones. Cut labour costs in half, but the same number of customers come in, so why hire another fellow to sit around with his hands in his pockets? So the only thing that happened is the business owner gains more money and his employees are poorer and have less means to participate in the market by buying stuff.
Or even take the manufacturing sector. It's the same issue with the primary industry. Sure a lot of jobs are going overseas, but a lot are permanently lot to industrialization. But as industrialization itself creates jobs, the main thing is that increased productivity doesn't necessarily translate into sales nor is prices simply the thing that drives sales. People need to either need it or want it (or persuaded of either of those.)
Because people only need/want so many refrigerators, tv's, and cars. Increased productivity without increased demand will only create the tail end of the roaring twenties where the market was saturated with goods that wouldn't sell no matter how they dropped the prices. Now they've come up with neat marketing techniques to avoid the bust post-twenties with the 'greatest and latest' new development that you must buy combined with goods designed to be replaced after a couple years. But those tricks of the trade will only take you so far and I fail to see how cutting minimum wage will lead to more hirings because if there's no demand why would a business try to increase productivity? You'll just end up with giant warehouses filled with refrigerators all selling for $10.
Also, in regards to the Thailand example. Why would dropping the wages in the US lead a company to hire extra workers in US? Thailand will still be cheaper, so why wouldn't they hire 20 more workers in Thailand instead? Unless you propose devaluing labour to third world standards. But that makes no sense as money has far different value in those countries. Even if we consider a place like Malaysia that has rapidly urbanized, their wages are far lower, but then 10 Ringet equals around 3 Canadian and will buy you a chicken and rice meal from one of the kopi tiams (and maybe a fruit drink? I forget, it's been a few years). The cost of living is just so radically different that I don't see how we can ever compete.
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On September 27 2011 10:30 jdseemoreglass wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 10:22 W2 wrote:
How come all the recent comments is about economic theory? Can someone link it back to the topic for me please?
Also back to the original topic... Who's front runner right now? Why isn't McCain running? That man was a hero. I'd vote for him again. Politics and economics are forever entwined. Discussing the candidates policies naturally leads to discussing economics. Also, discussing economic theory is more interesting then hearing people make fun of Republicans for 100+ pages.
Economic theory discussed by lay people fundamentally opposed really isn't interesting at all. I imagine it causes brain damage.
More reading for you, xDaunt. (sorry :p)
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Hey i'm trying to find out how the popularity of these candidates stands right now, in the US. I tried googleing and there are tons of articles but i couldnt find any normal opinion polls.
So, can someone link me a somewhat recent poll/standings of the rep. candidates? im a bit lost
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On September 27 2011 16:55 Geo.Rion wrote:
Hey i'm trying to find out how the popularity of this candidates stands right now, in the US. I tried googleing and there are tons of articles but i couldnt find any normal opinion polls.
So, can someone link me a somewhat recent poll/standings of the rep. candidates?
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/24/2423241/hermain-cain-wins-florida-straw.html
I know straw polls don't mean alot compared to nationwide but that's the most recent/hyped one atm. Straw poll is basically a poll that you can only vote in if you pay. So basically only the really dedicated republicans vote, good showing of what the hardcore base likes. Might also be scewed by the fact that this is the south and most of the voters were probably african american, wouldn't like to go into that troll bait OT stuff though lol, lived in FL for 16yrs btw so I'm cool.
+ Show Spoiler +In a stunning upset Saturday, Herman Cain won Florida’s Presidency 5 straw poll, a vote of 2,657 Republican activists that in past years has predicted the party nominee. Here are the results:
Herman Cain: 37 percent
Rick Perry: 15 percent
Mitt Romney: 14 percent
Rick Santorum: 10.9 percent
Ron Paul: 10.4 percent
Newt Gingrich: 8.4 percent
Jon Huntsman: 2.3 percent
Michelle Bachmann: 1.5 percent
Spoilered results if people didn't want to go to link.
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On September 27 2011 11:05 FabledIntegral wrote:
First, a 0.50 raise on a $5/hr job is a 10% increase which is fucking huge, so I'm not sure how you can say it's small. It's still pretty big on a $10/hr wage, which is 50% more than minimum, at a 5% increase. How you can trivialize companies paying out 5-10% out more per year per worker is beyond me. It really surprises me as well you can fathom that lowering minimum wages would not have a positive net effect on the economy, nearly all economic theory points to it having a very positive effect. Sure, it can fuck a lot of people in the process, but net effect?
I also don't know where you keep going on this demand thing. Demand will only rise as prices become cheaper. Also, as more jobs move to the U.S., more money is in the hands of U.S. consumers. Like I said previously, a more accurate scenario is that a company has 10 people here, 50 in Thailand, fires 20 in Thailand and hires 20 more here, meaning 30 people are employed at lower wages compared to the 10 that were previously, meaning more money being spent, stimulating the economy, creating more jobs and thus raising the wages of existing workers.
To the last point, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, and you're willing to work for $5/hr, don't they deserve that job more than you? Also, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, why should the company even hire you at a more expensive pay? You shouldn't be able to live off either $4/hr or $5/hr imo (well, you could if you live extremely cheaply with roommates and no family). Since when have we come to the conclusion that you should be able to sustain yourself on any job out there in existence? Some jobs are meant to give supplemental income, not be your career, and if you're trying to make your career into a $5/hr job then that's your fault for being such a damn unappealing person to society.
I don't know how old you are, but you obviously have no idea how a large portion of the US (and the world) lives.
You can be idealistic all you want, but in reality, eliminating the minimum wage would be an extremely heartless thing to do.
We aren't China in this country, and anyone actually trying to make a living in this country would rather you didn't turn us until a 2nd or 3rd world country.
Please go out and support yourself on a minimum wage job instead of being coddled by your parents and then try to argue that the entire workforce should work for $3/hour because it's "their fault" they have that job (if any job at all!).
On September 27 2011 00:43 jmac28 wrote:I don’t agree with many of the republican stances on social issues, but to me their economic policies outweigh the social policies.
On September 27 2011 00:49 xDaunt wrote:
All things being equal, this is why I am a republican. National security and economic policy trump every other issue. I consider "social policy" issues to be luxury issues. If we don't get our national security (foreign strength) and economic policy (domestic strength) right, then everything else is moot.
I am personally appalled at anyone that would put scraps of paper over the rights and well-being of other human beings.
Money doesn't buy happiness, a manufactured system of exchange is far less important than your living, breathing fellow man.
Throwing everyone who isn't an affluent white christian (and straight) under the bus is disgusting to me, and Republicans have lost my vote forever with their hateful, un-American views.
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On September 27 2011 15:15 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 11:05 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 10:13 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 10:03 Kiarip wrote:On September 27 2011 09:56 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 09:37 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 09:28 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 09:17 FabledIntegral wrote:On September 27 2011 09:06 Whitewing wrote:On September 27 2011 08:16 FabledIntegral wrote:
[quote]
Economically speaking it heavily benefits the poor... overall. By reducing unemployment. Many companies can't afford to employ very many people in the U.S. due to minimum wage, and thus will move jobs abroad. An abolished minimum wage would almost assuredly create a TON of jobs in the U.S., significantly helping those who are unemployed, while simultaneously hurting those who already have jobs. The net result is always that the overall social welfare is larger, but it's more complicated than that. I'm not a supporter of the abolishment of minimum wage anyways, but I think it is a little on the high side at the moment.
And as I said before, I don't think you should be able to raise a family on minimum wage. If you think you should be able to raise children as well as provide for yourself while affording food, housing, transportation, clothing, etc. for your children on a single job wages by doing something that requires almost no critical thinking and can easily be replaced doing, I think you're crazy.
[quote]
I really dislike how people say "low taxes for the wealthy." I mean, they aren't low taxes for the wealthy, they're actually substantially (imo) higher than that of the rest. You can speak relatively, but once again I think it's a terrible argument to point to other countries in comparison. Rather, you should be saying
a) Keeping tax rates only marginally (as I'd presume you'd put it) higher than the poor
for your first point. I know you said "low" and not "lower" but it's very much so implied by a lot of people that rich people pay less, whether it be an absolute value or percentage, when it's clearly not the case. They most certainly are low taxes for the wealthy. While the exact precise amount they pay is a good deal higher than the poor, the relative amount they pay is quite a bit lower, especially considering the absurd amounts of wealth they have. They can easily afford to pay a much MUCH bigger share than they currently do without even having a noticeable impact on their lifestyle, but that fact seems to escape people. They'd still be extremely wealthy, I'm not advocating communism here. Should wealth one already possesses be related to their income tax, though? If someone has 1billion dollars, and made $50,000 in income last year, they should be paying in that tax bracket, irrelevant of their 1 billion. I don't see how they pay a relatively lower amount, whatsoever. They pay a relatively higher amount of their income for income taxes? I'm not sure where you define "absurdly wealthy" either. Someone making say $400,000 per year, while definitely now falling into upper class, having a stayhome wife and say four kids, is still going to have a mortgage, and most likely won't be able to afford driving a Ferrari or some shit. Sure, those that are EXTREMELY wealthy, like those making say $3 million+ per year, might not take as much of a hit, but then they're also paying in over a million dollars in taxes of that three million (well, at least in CA, accounting for state income taxes). I don't know how you don't think that's a huge amount, when it's a third of their income. It's not like they didn't earn that income. I'd say almost everyone making a $100,000 salary is working significantly harder than those making minimum wage. At that point, your decisions matter, jobs are in your hands, profits of the company are highly relevant to your personal choices (exception of huge corps), significantly more stress involved in terms of decision making, far higher prerequisites and investment to obtain said job in the first place, etc. On September 27 2011 09:10 jbee wrote:
@kiarip The pizza boy is gambling his job/career while the pizza parlor is gambling lost revenue (which could be entirely made-up by having somebody else cover for him). If you don't see the imbalance in that then I have nothing more to say.
@fabled I don't think they should or shouldn't, as I am morally nihilistic. People want different things out of the government which means it is like arguing about taste ( hence why I hate politics). I only asked about this because I couldn't think of any reason somebody would support this, unless they owned a business. What i said was as example of if it was removed. If it was removed, pay wouldn't go to a dollar an hour, but it gives the ability for your employer to undercut you. This ability decreases the stability in the Poors' income which is why I can't see it as good for the poor either. Without government protection you're also far more likely to be a more productive worker for fear of losing your job. If you're valuable to the company, said company will be far less likely to attempt to undercut you because they value your labor. Of course, generalizing sweeps across the board may effect you if you're a small person in a massive company, but isn't it that company's choice on how it wants to run itself? That's the theory at least, I personally agree with you that job stability is decently more important, as even amazing work ethic won't always save you from individually getting screwed. I was careful to mention that I meant the top 2% of the wealth bracket qualifies as 'super rich'. I also think something needs to be done about the tax system in general, I don't believe income taxes in and of them themselves are sufficient, simply by design. Long term capital gains, for example, are taxed too low. The current system has the wealth accumulated all at the top: almost all of it, and more of it keeps going up there, rather than being spread out. The distribution of wealth is INCREDIBLY uneven. While I'm not suggesting we attempt to make it perfectly distributed so that everyone has a fair share of wealth relative to their actual income, the system should not have half of the entire country with a net total of one fiftieth of the total wealth. Oops, I must have missed your 2% quotation, I didn't go back and read your posts, but I've only been glancing over things at this point so I'm sure you're right. Regardless, even if you say taxes on the rich are low, they are still higher in both absolute and relative numbers to the poor. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.
Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need. I don't understand the sentiment whatsoever that "the rich aren't paying their fair share." They're paying almost the entire share, and relying on them soley isn't feasible anyways. As the article continues But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion. And these numbers don't even mention the fact that a ton of that money paid in by the rich is being directly given back to the poor as handouts. I think the answer comes with needing to cut spending, heavily. Preferably starting with the military. On September 27 2011 09:28 Whitewing wrote:
Current unemployment rates have less to do with cost of employment than it does with demand for production btw. People aren't hiring because there isn't enough demand for their products, so there's no reason to hire to increase production. Make employment cheaper --> product comes out cheaper --> demand increases because people can now afford product with their lower amount of money in their possession. Not to mention jobs relocating to the U.S. means money is staying here, etc. Making employment cheaper by lowering wages means people don't have money to buy even cheaper products. If you can lower the cost of employment in some way other than lowering wages, then by all means. yes... you can lower the liability... but also, more money will get paid out some more products will get bought... yes, they will be more essential type of products, but in general the total income of hte population will rise, because businesses will hire more, and the increased productivity will only lead to more growth.
Yes, there would be less unemployment, but I'm not sure how much less. By removing minimum wage, you provide the ability to lower wages, but without an incentive to actually hire (demand for production), hiring won't occur. The additional jobs that would be created would be very low paying jobs, and the net amount of money being paid out would not increase, so the result is that people who do have jobs get paid less, and some people who didn't have jobs get some very low paying jobs. I don't think that fixes anything. I should also point out that most employers don't usually give significant raises out to the low earners. If anything, they might get a raise of 50 cents after a year
there will be hiring, because if you're paying the workers less, but hire more workers you're more productive, and you can sell more goods while still making same or bigger profit by lowerin cost, then if you make more profit, you can hire even more workers, and be even more productive, driving the prices even lower, and thus making the goods available to even more people... if the goods are essential, then you will constantly have an increasing demand as you lower the cost, because like you said there's so many people that are already unemployed/employed at very low wages, that their consumption would probably definitely increase if given the chance by lower prices. You're ignoring demand again. Simply having the ability to produce additional goods is insufficient, demand has to be higher for there to be any reason to produce more. Lower costs are great and all, but that doesn't mean they'll hire more. Essential goods being cheaper would increase demand, assuming perfect competition (which is a major question in and of itself, good luck preventing collusion or monopoly here). But if your income goes down, you don't really buy more goods if the cost of goods goes down by an approximate amount. If anything, this would have the net result of less luxury goods being sold, since they are non-essential, there's no way their prices would go down from this. I'm fairly certain that lowering minimum wages would not have any net positive effect, and would probably screw a lot of people over who are already just barely eeking by. Plus, it causes more net problems: if I am willing to work for $5 an hour, but not less, they can just fire me and hire someone who will accept $4 an hour. I have no real negotiating powers without unions, which once again become extremely necessary. I also don't know where you keep going on this demand thing. Demand will only rise as prices become cheaper. Also, as more jobs move to the U.S., more money is in the hands of U.S. consumers. Like I said previously, a more accurate scenario is that a company has 10 people here, 50 in Thailand, fires 20 in Thailand and hires 20 more here, meaning 30 people are employed at lower wages compared to the 10 that were previously, meaning more money being spent, stimulating the economy, creating more jobs and thus raising the wages of existing workers. To the last point, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, and you're willing to work for $5/hr, don't they deserve that job more than you? Also, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, why should the company even hire you at a more expensive pay? You shouldn't be able to live off either $4/hr or $5/hr imo (well, you could if you live extremely cheaply with roommates and no family). Since when have we come to the conclusion that you should be able to sustain yourself on any job out there in existence? Some jobs are meant to give supplemental income, not be your career, and if you're trying to make your career into a $5/hr job then that's your fault for being such a damn unappealing person to society. I quite frankly don't get how you can ignore demand. A lot of this supply side economics (if that seems what is being argued) seems to consider the effects on only the manufacturing jobs, but in most cases I don't see why businesses would bother to hire. Take the primary industries for example. Logging is an old boys club here in BC. Average age is 50 and I doubt they've seriously hired much for a couple decades. You could hack and slash their wages to below minimum wage and it wouldn't deal with the biggest operational costs which is the choppers they run to log. Most of the labour jobs have been replaced by technology and if you cut labour costs, the extra money is more likely to replace jobs with machines then the other way around. They don't need extra labour for what they did. And you wouldn't want to increase production all that much anyways as logging is limited by how fast the third growth is coming in/ the remaining second growth. Now take the service industry, which is where most of the jobs are and the most devastating impact of no minimum wage. Cut labour costs in half and there's no need to hire extra minions for make work projects. The service industry will continue to run on the same amount of employees because people only need so much food and clothes want so much luxury items. A restaurant only needs so many employees, cutting employees wages in half will not suddenly make the owner want to double his staff unless the number of clientele increases (demand). Furthermore, if no minimum wage is across the board, I'd think he'd get less customers with the sudden decline in wages all over the place. Or take a small business. A bicycle shop, let's say. Where they sell bikes and parts and repair old ones. Cut labour costs in half, but the same number of customers come in, so why hire another fellow to sit around with his hands in his pockets? So the only thing that happened is the business owner gains more money and his employees are poorer and have less means to participate in the market by buying stuff. Or even take the manufacturing sector. It's the same issue with the primary industry. Sure a lot of jobs are going overseas, but a lot are permanently lot to industrialization. But as industrialization itself creates jobs, the main thing is that increased productivity doesn't necessarily translate into sales nor is prices simply the thing that drives sales. People need to either need it or want it (or persuaded of either of those.) Because people only need/want so many refrigerators, tv's, and cars. Increased productivity without increased demand will only create the tail end of the roaring twenties where the market was saturated with goods that wouldn't sell no matter how they dropped the prices. Now they've come up with neat marketing techniques to avoid the bust post-twenties with the 'greatest and latest' new development that you must buy combined with goods designed to be replaced after a couple years. But those tricks of the trade will only take you so far and I fail to see how cutting minimum wage will lead to more hirings because if there's no demand why would a business try to increase productivity? You'll just end up with giant warehouses filled with refrigerators all selling for $10. Also, in regards to the Thailand example. Why would dropping the wages in the US lead a company to hire extra workers in US? Thailand will still be cheaper, so why wouldn't they hire 20 more workers in Thailand instead? Unless you propose devaluing labour to third world standards. But that makes no sense as money has far different value in those countries. Even if we consider a place like Malaysia that has rapidly urbanized, their wages are far lower, but then 10 Ringet equals around 3 Canadian and will buy you a chicken and rice meal from one of the kopi tiams (and maybe a fruit drink? I forget, it's been a few years). The cost of living is just so radically different that I don't see how we can ever compete.
This doesn't take away from the fact that if no one wants American labor it's too expensive and lower wages is one of the ways this can be remedied.
Not every industry can hire more people but some would, and new businesses would come up that previously weren't able to because they were priced out as employers.
The service sector is largely useless for our economy, and you're right it wouldn't grow if the economy was allowed to operate freely, it would shrink because the only reason for the service sector to exist is to deliver the products, which the people can afford less and less of, so yes, the bicycle shop clerk would be in trouble, but those bikes aren't coming from american factories for the most part anyways.
Remember there's still the price of shipping, and etc. America needs to do something to become competitive again, appealing to needs of those employed with minimum wage completely ignores the needs of those that are unemployed.
Like I said earlier, protecting the employees creates expenses for the employers, and punishes the unemployed minimum wages don't have public interest at heart, especially not when such a large percentage is unemployed.
On September 27 2011 18:07 fant0m wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 11:05 FabledIntegral wrote:
First, a 0.50 raise on a $5/hr job is a 10% increase which is fucking huge, so I'm not sure how you can say it's small. It's still pretty big on a $10/hr wage, which is 50% more than minimum, at a 5% increase. How you can trivialize companies paying out 5-10% out more per year per worker is beyond me. It really surprises me as well you can fathom that lowering minimum wages would not have a positive net effect on the economy, nearly all economic theory points to it having a very positive effect. Sure, it can fuck a lot of people in the process, but net effect?
I also don't know where you keep going on this demand thing. Demand will only rise as prices become cheaper. Also, as more jobs move to the U.S., more money is in the hands of U.S. consumers. Like I said previously, a more accurate scenario is that a company has 10 people here, 50 in Thailand, fires 20 in Thailand and hires 20 more here, meaning 30 people are employed at lower wages compared to the 10 that were previously, meaning more money being spent, stimulating the economy, creating more jobs and thus raising the wages of existing workers.
To the last point, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, and you're willing to work for $5/hr, don't they deserve that job more than you? Also, if someone else is willing to work for $4/hr, why should the company even hire you at a more expensive pay? You shouldn't be able to live off either $4/hr or $5/hr imo (well, you could if you live extremely cheaply with roommates and no family). Since when have we come to the conclusion that you should be able to sustain yourself on any job out there in existence? Some jobs are meant to give supplemental income, not be your career, and if you're trying to make your career into a $5/hr job then that's your fault for being such a damn unappealing person to society. I don't know how old you are, but you obviously have no idea how a large portion of the US (and the world) lives. You can be idealistic all you want, but in reality, eliminating the minimum wage would be an extremely heartless thing to do.
why? because it would give a bunch of unemployed an opportunity to try to work for some sort of living? doesn't sound so heartless to me. If anything allowing the minimum wage to persist is heartless.
We aren't China in this country, and anyone actually trying to make a living in this country would rather you didn't turn us until a 2nd or 3rd world country.
there's almost no skillset difference between someone working at a minimum wage job and someone unemployed looking for a job nowadays...
Those are the only jobs that are actually in danger of having their wages lowered, and what so horribly wrong with that? if someone is willing to do your job for less money why shouldn't they do it?
Minimum wage law is effectively a law that keeps people from working.
Please go out and support yourself on a minimum wage job instead of being coddled by your parents and then try to argue that the entire workforce should work for $3/hour because it's "their fault" they have that job (if any job at all!).
Please go out and be unemployed with no skills unable to find a job, because no one would hire you for 7.50$/hour, because there's almost no positions you qualify to fill, and the government doesn't allow you to work for less.
$3/hour is a bit better than being unemployed with almost no marketplace skills with the current unemployment.
Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 00:43 jmac28 wrote:I don’t agree with many of the republican stances on social issues, but to me their economic policies outweigh the social policies.
Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 00:49 xDaunt wrote:
All things being equal, this is why I am a republican. National security and economic policy trump every other issue. I consider "social policy" issues to be luxury issues. If we don't get our national security (foreign strength) and economic policy (domestic strength) right, then everything else is moot. I am personally appalled at anyone that would put scraps of paper over the rights and well-being of other human beings. Money doesn't buy happiness, a manufactured system of exchange is far less important than your living, breathing fellow man. Throwing everyone who isn't an affluent white christian (and straight) under the bus is disgusting to me, and Republicans have lost my vote forever with their hateful, un-American views.
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scraps of paper? See your mentality even focuses on the irrelevant part of the economy, the same part that our leaders have beeen focusing... the fiat system...
economy isn't scraps of paper. Economy is products... it's food, clean water, medical services, anything you need... that's what an economy is, it's not at all about scraps of paper.
I don't see what's so appalling about saying "I hope that we first make sure that people are no longer unemployed and starving, and THEN we'll worry about other stuff."
How the fuck is that unamerican. It's trying to bring prosperity and liberty to our country, something we used have before being a big government liberal became the cool thing to be amongst both democrats and republicans.
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I'm sorry but a McDonald's or Walmart is not going to hire more people because the minimum wage is gone. The current employees are going to work the same job for less or get fired.
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