On September 28 2011 03:10 Signet wrote: A friend just told me that Chris Christie is having a Q&A session at Reagan library right now, looking like he intends to announce his candidacy?
If so, thank god. A sane candidate who still has a chance to get the nomination.
Probably has a strong chance of besting Obama as well (can he win NJ? My hunch is he takes VA off the table and makes NV and CO big battleground states), so it would be a tactically sound decision for GOP primary voters.
He's a more pugilistic Huntsman (and non-Mormon, if that matters). He hates teachers and unions enough to win over the rabid base, but he's not necessarily favoured by Jersey Republicans (possible RINO, which doesn't mean much anymore). He's a Romney-type, in other words, whose only role in the race will be to further distill support for other Establishment candidates.
Imagine Ron Paul actually taking the nomination with like 14% because the vote was so split.
On September 28 2011 03:14 Grumbels wrote: @FabledIntegral:
"the weight of the evidence suggests that modest increases in the minimum wage have had very little or no effect on employment."
This in a statement calling for a raise of the minimum wage by hundreds of respected economists, including Nobel Laureates. Note also that the minimum wage hasn't caught up with increases in productivity, so it's effectively pretty low already compared to the past.
That was written in 2006 (I'm guessing?) when the price of labor in many cases was already above the minimum wage, inflation was rampant, and there was, if anything a shortage of jobs. The minimum wage wouldn't have any significant effect on the economy at that point because it wasn't really binding at that point (I agree with them). We were in a time of rapid economic growth.
I might be wrong, but that's my interpretation. I agree with the fact that, when minimum wage isn't binding, it's not really a huge deal to raise it. Sure, many companies are paying it, but on the overall scale...
On September 28 2011 03:10 Signet wrote: A friend just told me that Chris Christie is having a Q&A session at Reagan library right now, looking like he intends to announce his candidacy?
If so, thank god. A sane candidate who still has a chance to get the nomination.
Probably has a strong chance of besting Obama as well (can he win NJ? My hunch is he takes VA off the table and makes NV and CO big battleground states), so it would be a tactically sound decision for GOP primary voters.
Calling Christie a "pugilistic Huntsman" is pretty apt. Christie is fairly liberal on a number of issues, such illegal immigration and gun control. He's seems to be fairly ruthlessly conservative in fiscal policy, though, which may trump everything else. We'll see. I think a lot of conservatives have this image of Christie being their knight in shining armor (I did too until I took a closer look), and I think that they're going to be a little disappointed when they get to know him better.
You don't increase minimum wage because of unemployment issues, but to raise the living standard of the poor. There has never been a higher inequality in the USA in the last 50 years than now. Maybe you take the risk to reduce employment, but from what I read this is fairly minimal and not supported by the evidence. Obviously you could increase it too much, but given how low the minimum wage is in the United States compared to countries with lower unemployment, I doubt the effects will be catastrophic and most likely a net benefit for the poor. Reducing it can mean you let the working poor pay for the cost of a crisis created by the rich, which sounds unfair to me.
I'm not an economist, so I don't really know what would be the correct value for the minimum wage, but I honestly doubt it should be even lower than it is already for the overall welfare of the country.
On September 28 2011 03:42 Grumbels wrote: You don't increase minimum wage because of unemployment issues, but to raise the living standard of the poor. There has never been a higher inequality in the USA in the last 50 years than now. Maybe you take the risk to reduce employment, but from what I read this is fairly minimal and not supported by the evidence. Obviously you could increase it too much, but given how low the minimum wage is in the United States compared to countries with lower unemployment, I doubt the effects will be catastrophic and most likely a net benefit for the poor. Reducing it can mean you let the working poor pay for the cost of a crisis created by the rich, which sounds unfair to me.
I'm not an economist, so I don't really know what would be the correct value for the minimum wage, but I honestly doubt it should be even lower than it is already for the overall welfare of the country.
The problem is that increasing minimum wage doesn't reduce the wage gap disparity. It merely serves to increase it, as businesses can't afford wages and move abroad, shrinking the economy, making jobs more scarce, meaning an increase in the supply of labor, meaning many jobs who were previously paying over minimum wage can actually decrease their pay, etc. Not to mention everyone is worse off from the economy shrinking, generally speaking.
That evidence merely stated that it wouldn't have drastic negative effects on the economy (it's not saying it would help, by any means). And that was true, it wouldn't have... before the recession. I doubt even half of them would support increasing the current minimum wage right now, but I'm not sure. I agree the wealth disparity is a little high, but it's not like the rich aren't already paying the vast majority of the taxes.
I'm almost 100% positive that lowering the minimum wages would have a net increase for the overall welfare of the economy, but that's not really what we want to target anyways since an overall net increase in welfare could be fucking over all the workers while benefiting all the corporations. Economic welfare includes the welfare companies gain from the lower wages... but like I said, not what we want necessarily.
On September 27 2011 15:15 Falling wrote: 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.
I'm personally astounded anyone could be so ignorant as to assume most people would be more concerned with luxuries such as free speech when they can't feed their children because there's no work.
I would like to point out that some quote tags got messed up and I never wrote what you are quoting me saying here.
As for your counter arguments. Look, I'm not saying we've necessarily reached a saturation point as a whole. However, I still maintain that simply increasing production and dropping prices does not necessarily translate into actual sales. People must need or want the product. Part of the issues the car industry was having was that it relied upon people buying a new car every couple years. Furthermore, they persisted with a whole line of gas guzzlers. When people suddenly held off buying because they neither needed it nor wanted a new car, suddenly the car industry is in trouble even though production remains the same and even with price drops. Right now they're offering to car trade ins because people aren't consuming as fast as they're producing. So yeah the price is dropping so they're selling again. But once the clunkers are off the road, they'll need to offer better and better trade-in for newer and newer cars. There will always be a market for new cars, but if production is ramped up even further then now and without any regard to demand, then I just don't see how they will sell. Because eventually it'll come down to the producer paying the customer to take the car off the lot. I really think production without any regard to demand will simply repeat the tail end of the 1920's with underconsumption.
As for the issue of jobs returning for Thailand. See I still don't see how this will work, unless you're hoping wages will drop down to being equal with third world countries. That's the only way I can see us getting those jobs back short of giant tariff walls. To be clear, is that how far you want labour wages to drop?
Edit The one further issue with your counter to my bicycle shop example. Yes, that will allow businesses to drop prices and price match with smaller labour costs. But then, it would seem that if cheaper labour will drive prices down, then the business doesn't necessarily save money to hire more people (that was the original argument wasn't it- that cutting wages would create more jobs.) So in the pricing war, they're right back down to that barely profit margin that they always have. Now, the wholesale drop in prices would decrease the cost of living which theoretically would actually allow a higher standard of living, which I think is the argument. However, the number of people effected by no minimum wage is so far reaching that I don't know that it actually will. In Canada, 95-05 I believe 80% of new jobs were in the service industry and this seems to be continuing trend. Given that so many are already on minimum wage (also a growing trend of high paying jobs being replaced by minimum wage) then the very people you want to sell your cheaper goods to also have less money. Perhaps substantially less money and are no more likely to buy your cheaper goods as they ever were and perhaps less likely.
As for whether I'm making this up off the top of my head- would it help to know I'm generally Keynesian? Or does that simply justify your dismissive attitude?
On September 27 2011 15:15 Falling wrote: 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.
I'm personally astounded anyone could be so ignorant as to assume most people would be more concerned with luxuries such as free speech when they can't feed their children because there's no work.
I would like to point out that some quote tags got messed up and I never wrote what you are quoting me saying here.
As for your counter arguments. Look, I'm not saying we've necessarily reached a saturation point as a whole. However, I still maintain that simply increasing production and dropping prices does not necessarily translate into actual sales. People must need or want the product. Part of the issues the car industry was having was that it relied upon people buying a new car every couple years. Furthermore, they persisted with a whole line of gas guzzlers. When people suddenly held off buying because they neither needed it nor wanted a new car, suddenly the car industry is in trouble even though production remains the same and even with price drops. Right now they're offering to car trade ins because people aren't consuming as fast as they're producing. So yeah the price is dropping so they're selling again. But once the clunkers are off the road, they'll need to offer better and better trade-in for newer and newer cars. There will always be a market for new cars, but if production is ramped up even further then now and without any regard to demand, then I just don't see how they will sell. Because eventually it'll come down to the producer paying the customer to take the car off the lot. I really think production without any regard to demand will simply repeat the tail end of the 1920's with underconsumption.
As for the issue of jobs returning for Thailand. See I still don't see how this will work, unless you're hoping wages will drop down to being equal with third world countries. That's the only way I can see us getting those jobs back short of giant tariff walls. To be clear, is that how far you want labour wages to drop?
Edit The one further issue with your counter to my bicycle shop example. Yes, that will allow businesses to drop prices and price match with smaller labour costs. But then, it would seem that if cheaper labour will drive prices down, then the business doesn't necessarily save money to hire more people (that was the original argument wasn't it- that cutting wages would create more jobs.) So in the pricing war, they're right back down to that barely profit margin that they always have. Now, the wholesale drop in prices would decrease the cost of living which theoretically would actually allow a higher standard of living, which I think is the argument. However, the number of people effected by no minimum wage is so far reaching that I don't know that it actually will. In Canada, 95-05 I believe 80% of new jobs were in the service industry and this seems to be continuing trend. Given that so many are already on minimum wage (also a growing trend of high paying jobs being replaced by minimum wage) then the very people you want to sell your cheaper goods to also have less money. Perhaps substantially less money and are no more likely to buy your cheaper goods as they ever were and perhaps less likely.
As for whether I'm making this up off the top of my head- would it help to know I'm generally Keynesian?
Sorry about the quote tags.
I've never mentioned increasing production though explicitly. Concerning your car industry analogy, that's an entirely different issue, isn't it? The product itself isn't competitive, although I don't think anyone would argue that American brand cars could easily outsell other cars if the price was right (sure, it may be an inferior make, but if it's 1/3 of the price? Of course this isn't feasible I'm merely stating the theory). The car industry issue isn't related to minimum wage in itself, I don't believe, unless you'd like to elaborate how it's connected. It has to do with the product having far better alternatives in the competitive free market.
In economic theory, any movement at all will affect someone out there. You lower the price of an apple by 10%, and a certain amount of people that wouldn't buy that apple before would buy it now. The exact same thing applies to wages. As wages here are become relatively cheaper, the opportunity cost of holding jobs here becomes much smaller. Take textiles for example, as it's the easiest. If wages are $8/hr here due to minimum wage and $1/hr in Thailand under fair labor practices or some law like that. If wages dropped to $7/hr, some companies would move their labor back - there has to be some tipping point where wages go abroad, and while definitely different depending on the company, it's not that low. The opportunity cost becomes less for the company, and some companies move back - not all, of course. Just as if you lower it to $6 it becomes even more appealing. Many companies don't want to locate abroad - it makes operational costs higher (shipping etc), there can be disconnects with factories and communication, quality control becomes harder to manage, there may exist language barriers within companies, potential tariffs can offset saved labor prices, scheduling deadlines become more complex, worker efficiency may be lower (and there's heavy statistical evidence American labor is far more efficient doing similar tasks when compared to Indian laborers, particularly), etc.
Concerning (response to bicycle) businesses, they're free to do whatever they want with the excess money, I was merely saying they can't turn it directly into profit. But assuming they're making the same marginal amounts per bicycle (say $10 profit per bike sold), by reducing the cost of the bicycle, and still making $10 per bicycle, they will be selling a greater quantity of them, thus increasing overall profit and allowing the business to expand as more and more people buy bikes (which happens even if the demand curve is uneffected). By expanding, the business employs more people, creating jobs. It's hard to argue they don't need to have higher production if they're selling more bikes, which they WILL sell more if they can slash prices.
Just because you have a Keynesian mindset, and so do I, doesn't mean we'll agree on the same things, because we may very well disagree where there are the market failures, etc.
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.
re: the rolling stone article, I don't think it's news that Fox News isn't news. Interesting read, though. They paint a pretty dark picture that I'm sure is a bit exaggerated, but I don't know anybody that would come running to their rescue defending "fair and balanced".
Jon Stewart, on the other hand - now THAT'S news. He did a great bit last night about the nomination, including a clip of Christie calling that ground zero mosque business "nonsense", followed by an interview with Ron Paul that was a little disappointing. I felt like they could have gone much deeper, and he is a normally a great interviewer, but I haven't seen the entire interview that was posted on the web. I'll see if I can find the video when I get home and post it.
@Fabled Re: increased production- you might not have explicitly stated that. I probably combined/mixed up a couple other peoples arguments with yours which confused things.
Re: job movement from foreign to domestic. Ok, that makes more sense to me and I take your meaning on the tipping point.
I do agree that slashed prices will see more sales at a bicycle shop- there are those people that would buy it if it were only just a little less expensive. However, it seems that they'd see a great increase in sales only if wages decrease for a select few and not a widespread cut. To me, no minimum wage effects too many people especially because it cuts into the buying power of too many people. It just seems too many people that are kind of living on the edge holding 2-3 minimum wage jobs will suddenly be down to buying the bare essentials (if they weren't already) and leaving little money for discretionary spending for said cheaper bicycles.
What I still disagree with is that minimum wage is what sends businesses overseas. Simply because typically the sorts of jobs that use minimum wages are rather difficult to outsource- fast food employees, grocery store workers, service industry workers and the like. If the argument was that the unions in manufacturers plants need to cut back wages, that I could understand. It's just that (and I could be wrong), I don't see most of the outsourced jobs being the minimum wage variety- unless maybe it's telephone customer support?
But I think I'll leave it be for now and avoid hijacking the thread too long.
Here's Cain's Florida straw poll speech. The guy is an incredible orator and clearly puts the other candidates to shame in that department. I can definitely see why he won after giving a speech like that.
People go on about how Rick Perry is an asshole because he's proud of his stance on the death penalty and how people who cheered for it are uncompassionate and retarded. Ron Paul is no different and it's ridiculous how many people in this thread support this libertarian meathead who seems to think that market forces and 'community' will account for any fuck-ups in the system:
We all know that Herman Cain won the Straw Poll because he's from Georgia, and that he's not a frontrunner now by any means? Right? Remember who won the Iowa Straw Poll? Did that matter?
On October 02 2011 13:56 Brutefidget wrote: We all know that Herman Cain won the Straw Poll because he's from Georgia, and that he's not a frontrunner now by any means? Right? Remember who won the Iowa Straw Poll? Did that matter?
The difference is that Cain is trending significantly upwards in the national polls. Zogby has a poll with Cain in the lead, and Fox has a poll that has Cain at 17% and in a statistical tie with Romney and Perry. That's fairly significant for someone who spent the past two months in the single digits. Bachmann never enjoyed that kind of bounce after Iowa.
On September 28 2011 03:42 Grumbels wrote: You don't increase minimum wage because of unemployment issues, but to raise the living standard of the poor. There has never been a higher inequality in the USA in the last 50 years than now. Maybe you take the risk to reduce employment, but from what I read this is fairly minimal and not supported by the evidence. Obviously you could increase it too much, but given how low the minimum wage is in the United States compared to countries with lower unemployment, I doubt the effects will be catastrophic and most likely a net benefit for the poor. Reducing it can mean you let the working poor pay for the cost of a crisis created by the rich, which sounds unfair to me.
I'm not an economist, so I don't really know what would be the correct value for the minimum wage, but I honestly doubt it should be even lower than it is already for the overall welfare of the country.
Nah, I owed a business and the last thing I would want is the government telling me how much to pay the workers.
Plus the minimal wages laws have always the negative effect of getting people fired.
so instead of having 20 people working for a company for $1000 per month, with minimal wage laws you would have 15 people working for $1200.
So its never a good thing, no matter if its done in the best interest.
I think the only candidate who isn't paid off by huge corporations is Ron Paul an that is why he is so appealing. not to mention that he predicted all of the troubles 10 years ago.
Also if was a US citizen I wouldn't want anyone destroying the 2nd amendment no matter how liberal or conservative he is.
I also think most people sense that their government is moving into a police state control grid, hurting their freedoms and liberties, instead of defending them and the only guy who voted against the patriot act, against the TSA act and against all these wars is Ron Paul.
Well Rick Perry will pretty much be out of the race if the media picks up the name of his hunting camp, and I'm sure they will as Herman Cain just attacked him for it.
On October 03 2011 04:22 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Well Rick Perry will pretty much be out of the race if the media picks up the name of his hunting camp, and I'm sure they will as Herman Cain just attacked him for it.
I don't get how this hasn't come up before now. Perry's been in public office for, what, 25 years now? More?
EPT
