Economics is a science, and like every science contains many rules and theories. Minimum wage and the removal of it in theory will create MORE productivity because 'any job is better than no job'. I think its important for you to realize this theory and your assumptions for economic benefit based from it hinge on the behavior of people. You're taking one massive leap here saying people will work more for less because they have to.
As someone who is employed, manages 16 people, deals with their Union steward, and has payroll muck to deal with every week I can tell you right now minimum wage is more than necessary. My company would just eat these people alive without what little protection a union provides them. Without providing a baseline standard for safety conditions, wages, healthcare, and rights -- we're basically China. Ever been to China? History tells us corporations have a history of stepping on its workers in every single way possible.
All this aside I'm not going to go through and pick apart your posts. I agree with some aspects and disagree with others. A large portion of your stances on many issues are economically sound in theory. I just think its important for you to realize the cruxes of your stances hinge on post predicted behavior of people which is never certain.
Seems like Bob Turner (R) will win Anthony Weiner's (D) former seat in NY-09, while Mark Amodei (R) is cruising to a 15-20 point win in NV-02, which is vacant from Dean Heller (R) being appointed to the Senate.
Turner is currently in the lead by 6 points, and Nate Silver (a statistician who I tend to trust) projects him to win by 10. The voter turnout was a little higher than expected, which tends to help Democrats, but the margin still is against them. In 2008, Obama won this district by 11 points, which is +4 from his 7 point national margin of victory. So in this district at least, things point towards Obama being an underdog in 2012. Although as the article I linked before notes, NY-09 is not a particularly representative district with a heavily Orthodox Jewish population.
NV-02 is a Republican-leaning district, but that margin of victory is pretty substantial.
This sums things up pretty well. I agree. I would vote for Huntsman honestly, but he has no chance of winning the nomination, so I'll probably wind up voting for Obama.
I will likely end up voting for Obama again(not that it matters in Texas lol). I could see myself voting for Huntsman, and to a lesser extent Paul(I'd have to think long and hard at Paul vs. Obama).
I don't see why Huntsman was called douchey earlier in this thread, if you watched the debate he was very direct sure, but not really a douche about what was asked of him. His response to pledge requests was fantastic.
Ron Paul's main appeal to me is his consistent voting track record, his stances on foreign policy, and I just think he has the intellect needed to work us out of this mess. His willingness and trust in corporations scare me.
As a resident of Texas essentially my entire life I remember the better days with Ann Richards, even GWB was a shrewd leader compared to Perry. Perry scares the living hell out of me, the fact that he is likely headed for the nomination is alarming at best.
Actually jace, the scientific method holds that all knowledge is tentative. Whatever status an idea has, whether it have the certainty of hypothesis, theory or law, it remains subservient to fact and remains vulnerable to modification or dismissal based on evidence that reality provides. Not disagreeing with your point about minimum wage, just a comment on your classification of economics as a science.
IMHO, Economics is a science insofar as it accepts the tenants of the scientific method. It should provide testable hypotheses and should either account for discrepancies between hypotheses and evidence, or limit these hypotheses to specific cases and thus voluntarily reduce its general applicability.
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: Looking at the previous five pages, I can only shake my head. You guys are neck to neck with China in a race to the bottom if any of the Republican candidates win, and half of you will fucking deserve it for voting against your interests. 1-2% of you will profit beyond your wildest dreams on the backs of the other 98%, wait, it's already happening.
Well, it's looking very much like a republican is going to win in 2012. A republican just won Anthony Weiner's seat in New York.
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: This whole bullshit about government wasting money that's better off is private hands is simply missing the point. The vast amounts of money funneled to the American wealthy individuals in the last two decades have gone on to fuel a massive industry that's focused on shuffling money around and magically creating profit out of thin air (aka. the booming financial industry). The very fact that the financial industry is such a dominating sector of the US economy should set off alarm bells about what the wealthy do with money given to them (let it be managed by wealth managers).
You do realize that the big Wall Street firms (HINT: GOLDMAN SACHS) are all major supporters of democrats (ie bought and paid for by democrats), right? Don't you think that GE's current relationship with the Obama administration is crony capitalism at its finest? Have you heard anything about the current Solyndra scandal? This has all the makings of being worse for Obama than Operation Fast and Furious.
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: Yet, in the face of all of this, people have the funny notion that the mega-rich and giant corporations really aren't rich enough to create jobs and start companies. Really? They can buy entire fucking countries in Africa with the sums that they spend on acquisitions but when it comes to meeting market demands, they're too bloody poor to start up a new product line that has profit written all over it? Bullshit.
Are you really going to argue that democrats are any better in this regard? The difference is that republican policies are actually reasonably calculated towards helping smaller businesses (EDIT: Lower taxes and less regulation = easier to operate and make money with the business).
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: On top of all of that, you have this ridiculous anti-government sentiment wher e its argued that the government only wastes money that could be spent by the private sector. In case you haven't noticed, US executive compensation in the last decade or so has skyrocketed to frankly absurd levels. This should be a giant red flag to those that hypothesize that the private sector tends towards efficiency. Are we to suppose now that the executive of today was ten, twenty or fifty times more capable than the exec of thirty years ago? Keeping costs low only applies apparently to the wages of the working class, not so for the upperclass who wantonly inflate their compensation because of information asymmetry that prevents their feet from being held to the same fire that they hold their employees to.
Maybe executive pay is, in fact, efficient? Look, executives of large corporations have ridiculous work hours and incredibly complex responsibilities. If you're a $50 billion corporation, don't you want the "best and the brightest" holding the reins? Do you think that kind of elite talent is going to come cheaply? Of course not. Is the compensation worth it if the services that the executive provides is worth many times the amount of his compensation? You bet. And what happens if the executive isn't competent? THEY GET FIRED AND REPLACED WITH SOMEONE ELSE.
Nevertheless, even if we accept that executive pay is inefficient, what does that have to do with government inefficiency and waste? Not much.
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: Then we also have the cherry on top of the cake, the notion that dismantling regulations, minimum wages, labor laws and unions will somehow lead to a massive surge of job creation. People DIED for the right to be unionized, because before collective bargaining, people worked in terrible conditions for COMPANY SCRIP! That's right, you didn't even get MONEY, you got a voucher redeemable for goods at the company's prices! It was economic slavery papered over with a sneeze of free market ideology. When you bargain with power asymmetries, someone will get screwed over. Why, in the name of all that's good, would anyone choose to reinstate the tender mercies of the "free market" on themselves by rolling back all the protections that your country has put into place. Protections, that I might remind you, were given the force of law precisely because of past abuses.
Labor abuses? There haven't been real labor abuses in this country for at least fifty years. The original conditions that fostered unionization (when workers actually were screwed at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries) no longer exist. If anything, unions are completely out of control with their compensation, benefits, and pension packages -- government workers unions being the worst offenders. Fortunately, people are finally catching on to their racket (see Wisconsin).
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: Where in all of this policy talk does the well-being of the population come in? The false dichotomy being presented here is either you, the working class, accept a degradation of your living standards and conditions, or everyone goes bust. Bull-fucking-shit. The US is not bankrupt, it's still immensely rich, but all that wealth is circulating like fetid sewage through your mockery of a banking system and your two tiered economy and all it's doing is further expanding the power and ownership of a tiny minority.
I don't really want to open up the big can of worms that's here and really expound on something which could/should be its own thread, but I'd posit to you that conservative policies would promote the overall well-being of the country and its people.
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: Stop working against yourselves and realize that the only remotely reasonable candidate of the Republican party has apparently been doomed by his embrace of reality.
On September 14 2011 13:29 Signet wrote: On tonight's special elections:
Seems like Bob Turner (R) will win Anthony Weiner's (D) former seat in NY-09, while Mark Amodei (R) is cruising to a 15-20 point win in NV-02, which is vacant from Dean Heller (R) being appointed to the Senate.
Turner is currently in the lead by 6 points, and Nate Silver (a statistician who I tend to trust) projects him to win by 10. The voter turnout was a little higher than expected, which tends to help Democrats, but the margin still is against them. In 2008, Obama won this district by 11 points, which is +4 from his 7 point national margin of victory. So in this district at least, things point towards Obama being an underdog in 2012. Although as the article I linked before notes, NY-09 is not a particularly representative district with a heavily Orthodox Jewish population.
NV-02 is a Republican-leaning district, but that margin of victory is pretty substantial.
A republican hasn't held the NY-09 seat for 80 years.... until now.
On September 14 2011 12:49 Kiarip wrote: ok last post for me today... i've been posting the entire day with my 'a' key in my clipboard caz that key is broken, and it's getting really annoying.
We are the strongest economy in Europe by far because of those changes. Our overall wealth increased as nation, but neither were new jobs created nor did the average wealth increase - it's actually to the contrary: while the average monetary assets of the richest 1% of our society increased by an amount of 390.000€, the assets of the lowest 70% basically didn't increase at all. (if you take inflation into account some parts actually lost money. And don't get me talking about the increase in corporate profits compared to the increase in salaries makes the rich/poor one appear pale)
I think lobbyism is largely at fault here. European countries are known to have a strong central government (Hope I'm not lying here, I may be.) When a government has a lot of power it get lobbyists coming in that pretty much bribe politicians to support their interests. at least this is what happens in the US.
If you decrease the power of central government, to not subsidize large corporations then they will be forced to invest more, because they will lose their competitive edge if they sit on large profits unless it's a monopoly.
Unions also have a role to play in helping workers bargain for higher wages.
You seem to take the "lower restriction for business = more profit = more jobs => more overall wealth" formula for granted, but I feel very sceptical regarding those 'truths' since the last 15 years have actually shown exactly the opposite, at least over here.
I agree it's not perfect, but at the level of small businesses it works better, than at the level of large corporations.
and in the end how would you propose that new jobs are created when it's not profitable to hire an employee for the current minimum wage?
We already see what happens when powers are in the individual states' hands. The lobbying shifts to state governments, where local citizens literally CANNOT compete with the national capital of a lobbying group. You have districts/states which already are inline with the goals of large interests, and then you only have to spend those large chunks of money on swing areas. The lobbying and manipulation doesn't stop, it just gets shifted and delocalized as well, where people have fewer protections and there are fewer eyes watching.
As for the minimum wage part, the argument right now is about jobs because wages are already guaranteed. If we were in a market where those wages weren't guaranteed, you bet we'd also see a huge debate about wages. Companies use the information of national unemployment to leverage workers of pay, because being paid $4/hr is better than being unemployed. Even if the employee is worth much more to the company, the fear of unemployment is enough to pay them well under market value. It happens right now with higher skill/wage jobs right now. People are willing to do more work and get paid less, JUST so they don't end up as an unemployment statistic.
I agree with the first paragraph more so than the second, I don't know what should be done about lobbying groups and their relationships with state legislatures... I'm not convinced that State lobbying is harder to stop, my common sense would tell me that it should be easier but like I said I don't know.
as for wages... yes of course there's going to be some problems with taking advantage of workers, but it gives small businesses incentive to higher more people. Once again I don't know if there's a solution that will immediately please everyone, but I feel like if no one is willing to hire, then there will be no jobs at all so there needs to be incentives made to hire more, by protecting workers less so that they are hire-able.
Well, right now, there isn't enough spending or qualified enough candidates to battle larger interests. When you're deciding if there should be geographical monopolies of specific utilities/technology, and you are a lawyer who got elected, you're not going to have the foreknowledge or resources to educate yourself on the technologies available and how different approaches would affect areas. Instead, you get a company/group send a full-time lobbyist to draft bills and do the research for them (in a definite biased way). This already happens quite a bit.
If the focus was shifted to states, I'm not sure there would be as strong of an incentive for citizen watch groups to do the same. Right now, many of them only have enough to send a federal "envoy," and that's barely enough to keep us where we are now. You change that to divided "markets" and then you lose actual support ("Why am I paying for ad campaigns in California?! What about Oklahoma?!"), as well as lose the central effort towards DC.
As for jobs, I'm not even sure a lowering of wages would bring jobs in. Movie theaters pretty much abuse their employees, but you never hear that they are the bastion of employment in a recession. They get all kinds of exemptions, yet they use them to make profits. I think a lot of large corporations would abuse this, as well as quite a few small businesses. But, I'm also aware of areas where the cost of living is so low that the minimum wage is actually overpay, but many times they have such small oversight that ignoring the law with cash (along with ignoring other federal employment laws) is a easy/possible thing.
On September 14 2011 13:29 Signet wrote: On tonight's special elections:
Seems like Bob Turner (R) will win Anthony Weiner's (D) former seat in NY-09, while Mark Amodei (R) is cruising to a 15-20 point win in NV-02, which is vacant from Dean Heller (R) being appointed to the Senate.
Turner is currently in the lead by 6 points, and Nate Silver (a statistician who I tend to trust) projects him to win by 10. The voter turnout was a little higher than expected, which tends to help Democrats, but the margin still is against them. In 2008, Obama won this district by 11 points, which is +4 from his 7 point national margin of victory. So in this district at least, things point towards Obama being an underdog in 2012. Although as the article I linked before notes, NY-09 is not a particularly representative district with a heavily Orthodox Jewish population.
NV-02 is a Republican-leaning district, but that margin of victory is pretty substantial.
A republican hasn't held the NY-09 seat for 80 years.... until now.
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: Looking at the previous five pages, I can only shake my head. You guys are neck to neck with China in a race to the bottom if any of the Republican candidates win, and half of you will fucking deserve it for voting against your interests. 1-2% of you will profit beyond your wildest dreams on the backs of the other 98%, wait, it's already happening.
This whole bullshit about government wasting money that's better off is private hands is simply missing the point. The vast amounts of money funneled to the American wealthy individuals in the last two decades have gone on to fuel a massive industry that's focused on shuffling money around and magically creating profit out of thin air (aka. the booming financial industry). The very fact that the financial industry is such a dominating sector of the US economy should set off alarm bells about what the wealthy do with money given to them (let it be managed by wealth managers).
Yet, in the face of all of this, people have the funny notion that the mega-rich and giant corporations really aren't rich enough to create jobs and start companies. Really? They can buy entire fucking countries in Africa with the sums that they spend on acquisitions but when it comes to meeting market demands, they're too bloody poor to start up a new product line that has profit written all over it? Bullshit.
On top of all of that, you have this ridiculous anti-government sentiment where its argued that the government only wastes money that could be spent by the private sector. In case you haven't noticed, US executive compensation in the last decade or so has skyrocketed to frankly absurd levels. This should be a giant red flag to those that hypothesize that the private sector tends towards efficiency. Are we to suppose now that the executive of today was ten, twenty or fifty times more capable than the exec of thirty years ago? Keeping costs low only applies apparently to the wages of the working class, not so for the upperclass who wantonly inflate their compensation because of information asymmetry that prevents their feet from being held to the same fire that they hold their employees to.
Then we also have the cherry on top of the cake, the notion that dismantling regulations, minimum wages, labor laws and unions will somehow lead to a massive surge of job creation. People DIED for the right to be unionized, because before collective bargaining, people worked in terrible conditions for COMPANY SCRIP! That's right, you didn't even get MONEY, you got a voucher redeemable for goods at the company's prices! It was economic slavery papered over with a sneeze of free market ideology. When you bargain with power asymmetries, someone will get screwed over. Why, in the name of all that's good, would anyone choose to reinstate the tender mercies of the "free market" on themselves by rolling back all the protections that your country has put into place. Protections, that I might remind you, were given the force of law precisely because of past abuses.
Where in all of this policy talk does the well-being of the population come in? The false dichotomy being presented here is either you, the working class, accept a degradation of your living standards and conditions, or everyone goes bust. Bull-fucking-shit. The US is not bankrupt, it's still immensely rich, but all that wealth is circulating like fetid sewage through your mockery of a banking system and your two tiered economy and all it's doing is further expanding the power and ownership of a tiny minority.
Stop working against yourselves and realize that the only remotely reasonable candidate of the Republican party has apparently been doomed by his embrace of reality.
This. Stop voting against your economic interests. Unless you make over $250,000 dollars a year, you shouldn't vote republican. I'm sorry, it's that simple. All the bullshit they sell you about "free market" this and "job creator" that is just that, bullshit. They have immense wealth and they use this wealth to convince idiots that they should vote against their own economic interests and keep giving them tax breaks. I have to hand it to them, it's a good scam.
Now we're close to undoing 100+ years of legislation trying to give the rest of the population a fair shake (see Wisconsin). And people continue to eat it up. Don't vote on any stupid shit they try to convince you affects your life, this includes but is not limited to: gay marriage, abortion, gays in the military, etc. Unless you or a loved one directly fit into those categories, it doesn't affect your life. They are selling you this bullshit to keep you voting AGAINST your OWN economic interests.
One need only to look at the latest debate to see who the majority of these candidates are hoping will turn out on election day. The uneducated and warmongering crowd. It's pretty sad that the party that is pro-life will so readily cheer at death. Retarded.
On September 14 2011 13:51 xDaunt wrote: Maybe executive pay is, in fact, efficient? Look, executives of large corporations have ridiculous work hours and incredibly complex responsibilities. If you're a $50 billion corporation, don't you want the "best and the brightest" holding the reins? Do you think that kind of elite talent is going to come cheaply? Of course not. Is the compensation worth it if the services that the executive provides is worth many times the amount of his compensation? You bet. And what happens if the executive isn't competent? THEY GET FIRED AND REPLACED WITH SOMEONE ELSE.
I'd like to answer that with a quote.
During the last three decades wages of most US-citiens increased only moderatly: the average yearly Income grew inflation-adjusted from 32522$ in 1970 to 35864$ a year in 1999. Ten percent in 29 years - an improvent, though just a very meek one. According to the Fortune Magazine annual salarys of the directors of the biggest 100 US-Companies rose from 1,3 million dollar - 39 times the wage of an average worker - to 37,5 million dollar, more than 1000 times the income of an average worker.
[roughly translated from this german source: http://www.zeit.de/2002/46/200246_krugmann.neu.xml/seite-1 - though it's a translated articel of Paul Krugman titled "The American Nightmare", maybe you are able to find an original in english if you're interested]
I think there's nothing left to say. We could argue all night about all those "elite talent" managers/ceos/directors/whatever who failed miserably, ridicouling the whole idea of "the markt knows best" again and again. Quick example: The top tiers of the switzer major bank UBS rewarded themselves with 2 billion € boni - while at the same time making a deficit of 2 billion € AND having to be bailed out of the crisis by tax money. Elite talent, eh? But why use anecdotal evidence when the numbers are so clear?
Do you really think anything those people do is worth 1000x the job of an average employee? Is one year of their work worth 1000 years of another work? Do you think their education was 1000 times harder than that of the average american? 37,5 million dollar are enough to give a two digit-number of people the same qualifications - per fuckin year. You've lost touch with reality if you think those kinds of chasms are justifiable. Do you really expect a system with such enourmous chasms between people to be stable in any kind of way? And even if you for some wicked reasons do not regard those relations as completly retarded, do you really think the increase by the factor 30 doesn't stem from people in high positions filling their own pockets by giving themselves higher wages again and again and again and again? Presidents/Directors/CEOs have suddenly become 30x more efficent while the average american is worth perfectly as much as in the 70s? OH CMON.
Funny sidenote: those are just the numbers of 1999, try finding the new numbers after the burst of a financial bubble that destroyed your middle-class while the fortunes of the richest actually increased. I wouldn't be suprised if the gap has widened even further.
On September 14 2011 09:36 jdseemoreglass wrote: I miss the days when this thread was about bashing Republicans and not about people pretending they understand anything about economics.
Honestly, there's nothing wrong with saying "I support this policy because I think it is morally correct." You don't have to pretend or claim that it is also efficient or economical. Most moral policies aren't.
God I hate people like you, you accuse others of not understanding economics and then make statements as if they're fact without backing anything up. GTFO.
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: Looking at the previous five pages, I can only shake my head. You guys are neck to neck with China in a race to the bottom if any of the Republican candidates win, and half of you will fucking deserve it for voting against your interests. 1-2% of you will profit beyond your wildest dreams on the backs of the other 98%, wait, it's already happening.
Well, it's looking very much like a republican is going to win in 2012. A republican just won Anthony Weiner's seat in New York.
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: This whole bullshit about government wasting money that's better off is private hands is simply missing the point. The vast amounts of money funneled to the American wealthy individuals in the last two decades have gone on to fuel a massive industry that's focused on shuffling money around and magically creating profit out of thin air (aka. the booming financial industry). The very fact that the financial industry is such a dominating sector of the US economy should set off alarm bells about what the wealthy do with money given to them (let it be managed by wealth managers).
You do realize that the big Wall Street firms (HINT: GOLDMAN SACHS) are all major supporters of democrats (ie bought and paid for by democrats), right? Don't you think that GE's current relationship with the Obama administration is crony capitalism at its finest? Have you heard anything about the current Solyndra scandal? This has all the makings of being worse for Obama than Operation Fast and Furious.
Actually, there's plenty of Wall Street's dollars on both sides. This has nothing at all to do with the fact that trickle down economics hasn't trickled down at all. Cutting corporate taxes and capital gains taxes only fuel the surge of "money making money" BS that's going on. If there was wrongdoing in the Solyndra incident, then hopefully (yes, I know that's a stretch with a corporate bought government) it will be identified and punishment meted out. Still has nothing to do with trickle down.
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: Yet, in the face of all of this, people have the funny notion that the mega-rich and giant corporations really aren't rich enough to create jobs and start companies. Really? They can buy entire fucking countries in Africa with the sums that they spend on acquisitions but when it comes to meeting market demands, they're too bloody poor to start up a new product line that has profit written all over it? Bullshit.
Are you really going to argue that democrats are any better in this regard? The difference is that republican policies are actually reasonably calculated towards helping smaller businesses (EDIT: Lower taxes and less regulation = easier to operate and make money with the business).
Corporate taxes are paid on profit. If you're running into the ground, the problem doesn't lie with corporate tax rates. Many of your giant corporations pay no taxes anyway thanks to the swiss cheese of your tax code and tax havens. Cutting taxes even more isn't going to make them start up new product lines. Plus, you know, the constant conflation of capital gains tax and income tax that Republicans love to do and treating the higher income brackets especially well in that regard. That hasn't worked out so well has it? See the point about Wall Street getting richer and handling more and more money.
Or maybe you're talking about payroll taxes. Which has been done here during the recession and is included in Obama's newest plan.
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: On top of all of that, you have this ridiculous anti-government sentiment wher e its argued that the government only wastes money that could be spent by the private sector. In case you haven't noticed, US executive compensation in the last decade or so has skyrocketed to frankly absurd levels. This should be a giant red flag to those that hypothesize that the private sector tends towards efficiency. Are we to suppose now that the executive of today was ten, twenty or fifty times more capable than the exec of thirty years ago? Keeping costs low only applies apparently to the wages of the working class, not so for the upperclass who wantonly inflate their compensation because of information asymmetry that prevents their feet from being held to the same fire that they hold their employees to.
Maybe executive pay is, in fact, efficient? Look, executives of large corporations have ridiculous work hours and incredibly complex responsibilities. If you're a $50 billion corporation, don't you want the "best and the brightest" holding the reins? Do you think that kind of elite talent is going to come cheaply? Of course not. Is the compensation worth it if the services that the executive provides is worth many times the amount of his compensation? You bet. And what happens if the executive isn't competent? THEY GET FIRED AND REPLACED WITH SOMEONE ELSE.
Nevertheless, even if we accept that executive pay is inefficient, what does that have to do with government inefficiency and waste? Not much.
Plenty. Inefficiency is measured by a standard, and the private sector doesn't seem to be doing that well, no? Or are we to make of it that executives of thirty years ago did virtually nothing and had no responsibilities compared to the exec of today? If not, how do you explain the skyrocketing of their pay? Remember, during the healthcare debate, the efficiency of your government medical entity Medicare was shown to be higher than that of private insurers. Perry's brilliant plan to reduce waste by cutting funds for firefighting proved to be pretty prescient, just in the wrong way.
I'm not arguing that government has no waste. I believe that there is waste in every organization, simply from inertia. But arguing that money is always better in private hands is myopic and ignores the many instances that governments have put wealth to good use. You can vote at a local level to change how the money is used, you can't do that for private money.
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: Then we also have the cherry on top of the cake, the notion that dismantling regulations, minimum wages, labor laws and unions will somehow lead to a massive surge of job creation. People DIED for the right to be unionized, because before collective bargaining, people worked in terrible conditions for COMPANY SCRIP! That's right, you didn't even get MONEY, you got a voucher redeemable for goods at the company's prices! It was economic slavery papered over with a sneeze of free market ideology. When you bargain with power asymmetries, someone will get screwed over. Why, in the name of all that's good, would anyone choose to reinstate the tender mercies of the "free market" on themselves by rolling back all the protections that your country has put into place. Protections, that I might remind you, were given the force of law precisely because of past abuses.
Labor abuses? There haven't been real labor abuses in this country for at least fifty years. The original conditions that fostered unionization (when workers actually were screwed at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries) no longer exist. If anything, unions are completely out of control with their compensation, benefits, and pension packages -- government workers unions being the worst offenders. Fortunately, people are finally catching on to their racket (see Wisconsin).
Wisconsin? You mean the place where the governor casually discusses union crushing with a known plutocrat? That place?
No real labor abuses? Might I point you to the multiple mine accidents that your energy industry suffers? How about deaths from grain suffocation in violation of the law? Or the fact that Wal Mart has no compunction about paying employees in company scrip outside of the US? Is this the state you want to return to?
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: Where in all of this policy talk does the well-being of the population come in? The false dichotomy being presented here is either you, the working class, accept a degradation of your living standards and conditions, or everyone goes bust. Bull-fucking-shit. The US is not bankrupt, it's still immensely rich, but all that wealth is circulating like fetid sewage through your mockery of a banking system and your two tiered economy and all it's doing is further expanding the power and ownership of a tiny minority.
I don't really want to open up the big can of worms that's here and really expound on something which could/should be its own thread, but I'd posit to you that conservative policies would promote the overall well-being of the country and its people.
I hope you strictly mean economic conservatives, because the social conservatism that the Republicans run on has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
On September 14 2011 13:06 hummingbird23 wrote: Stop working against yourselves and realize that the only remotely reasonable candidate of the Republican party has apparently been doomed by his embrace of reality.
On September 14 2011 13:51 xDaunt wrote: Maybe executive pay is, in fact, efficient? Look, executives of large corporations have ridiculous work hours and incredibly complex responsibilities. If you're a $50 billion corporation, don't you want the "best and the brightest" holding the reins? Do you think that kind of elite talent is going to come cheaply? Of course not. Is the compensation worth it if the services that the executive provides is worth many times the amount of his compensation? You bet. And what happens if the executive isn't competent? THEY GET FIRED AND REPLACED WITH SOMEONE ELSE.
During the last three decades wages of most US-citiens increased only moderatly: the average yearly Income grew inflation-adjusted from 32522$ in 1970 to 35864$ a year in 1999. Ten percent in 29 years - an improvent, though just a very meek one. According to the Fortune Magazine annual salarys of the companies of the directors of the biggest 100 US-Companies rose from 1,3 million dollar - 39 times the wage of an average worker - to 37,5 million dollar, more than 1000 times the income of an average worker.
[roughly translated from this german source: http://www.zeit.de/2002/46/200246_krugmann.neu.xml/seite-1 - though it's a translated articel of Paul Krugman titled "The American Nightmare", maybe you are able to find an original in english if you're interested]
I think there's nothing left to say. We could argue all night long about tons of "elite talent" managers/ceos/directors/whatever who failed miserably, ridicouling the whole idea of "the markt knows best" again and again. Quick example: The top tiers of the switzer major bank UBS rewarded themselves with 2 billion € boni - while at the same time making a deficit of 2 billion € AND having to be bailed out of the crisis by tax money. Elite talent, eh?. But why use anecdotal evidence when the numbers are so clear?
Do you really think anything those people do is worth 1000x the job of an average employee? Is one year of their work worth 1000 years of another work? Do you think their education was 1000 times harder than that of the average american? 37,5 million dollar are enough to give a two digit-number of people the same qualifications - per fuckin year. You've lost touch with reality if you think those kinds of chasms are justifiable. Do you really expect a system with such enourmous chasms between people to be stable in any kind of way? And even if you for some wicked reasons do not regard those relations as completly retarded, do you really think the increase by the factor 30 doesn't stem from people in high positions filling their own pockets by giving themselves higher wages again and again and again and again? Presidents/Directors/CEOs have suddenly become 30x more efficent while the average american is worth perfectly as much as in the 70s? OH CMON.
Fun fact: those are just the numbers of 1999, try finding the new numbers after the burst of a financial bubble that destroyed your middle-class while the fortunes of the richest actually increased.
I like you .
Well... Sooner or later enough people will be fed up enough, but it probably won't end pretty....
On September 14 2011 13:51 xDaunt wrote: Maybe executive pay is, in fact, efficient? Look, executives of large corporations have ridiculous work hours and incredibly complex responsibilities. If you're a $50 billion corporation, don't you want the "best and the brightest" holding the reins? Do you think that kind of elite talent is going to come cheaply? Of course not. Is the compensation worth it if the services that the executive provides is worth many times the amount of his compensation? You bet. And what happens if the executive isn't competent? THEY GET FIRED AND REPLACED WITH SOMEONE ELSE.
I'd like to answer that with a quote.
During the last three decades wages of most US-citiens increased only moderatly: the average yearly Income grew inflation-adjusted from 32522$ in 1970 to 35864$ a year in 1999. Ten percent in 29 years - an improvent, though just a very meek one. According to the Fortune Magazine annual salarys of the companies of the directors of the biggest 100 US-Companies rose from 1,3 million dollar - 39 times the wage of an average worker - to 37,5 million dollar, more than 1000 times the income of an average worker.
[roughly translated from this german source: http://www.zeit.de/2002/46/200246_krugmann.neu.xml/seite-1 - though it's a translated articel of Paul Krugman titled "The American Nightmare", maybe you are able to find an original in english if you're interested]
I think there's nothing left to say. We could argue all night long about tons of "elite talent" managers/ceos/directors/whatever who failed miserably, ridicouling the whole idea of "the markt knows best" again and again. Quick example: The top tiers of the switzer major bank UBS rewarded themselves with 2 billion € boni - while at the same time making a deficit of 2 billion € AND having to be bailed out of the crisis by tax money. Elite talent, eh?. But why use anecdotal evidence when the numbers are so clear?
Do you really think anything those people do is worth 1000x the job of an average employee? Is one year of their work worth 1000 years of another work? Do you think their education was 1000 times harder than that of the average american? 37,5 million dollar are enough to give a two digit-number of people the same qualifications - per fuckin year. You've lost touch with reality if you think those kinds of chasms are justifiable. Do you really expect a system with such enourmous chasms between people to be stable in any kind of way? And even if you for some wicked reasons do not regard those relations as completly retarded, do you really think the increase by the factor 30 doesn't stem from people in high positions filling their own pockets by giving themselves higher wages again and again and again and again? Presidents/Directors/CEOs have suddenly become 30x more efficent while the average american is worth perfectly as much as in the 70s? OH CMON.
Fun fact: those are just the numbers of 1999, try finding the new numbers after the burst of a financial bubble that destroyed your middle-class while the fortunes of the richest actually increased.
I like you .
Well... Sooner or later enough people will be fed up enough, but it probably won't end pretty....
And that's a tragedy in itself. There will be a great deal of waste and unnecessary infighting. IIRC, the French Revolution executed several chemists whose efforts we owe quite a bit to.
On September 14 2011 13:29 Signet wrote: On tonight's special elections:
Seems like Bob Turner (R) will win Anthony Weiner's (D) former seat in NY-09, while Mark Amodei (R) is cruising to a 15-20 point win in NV-02, which is vacant from Dean Heller (R) being appointed to the Senate.
Turner is currently in the lead by 6 points, and Nate Silver (a statistician who I tend to trust) projects him to win by 10. The voter turnout was a little higher than expected, which tends to help Democrats, but the margin still is against them. In 2008, Obama won this district by 11 points, which is +4 from his 7 point national margin of victory. So in this district at least, things point towards Obama being an underdog in 2012. Although as the article I linked before notes, NY-09 is not a particularly representative district with a heavily Orthodox Jewish population.
NV-02 is a Republican-leaning district, but that margin of victory is pretty substantial.
A republican hasn't held the NY-09 seat for 80 years.... until now.
Turner won because of gay marriage and Israel.
If that is true (the gay marriage part) then that's a tragic commentary on our values as a society.
I want to address the issue raised above of whether a CEO (or any other highly-paid individual) should be paid 1000 times as much as a median wage worker.
When you consider the value that these individuals create for their companies, employees, and shareholders, the answer is "yes."
Let me choose a really easy example to illustrate why this is so: Steve Jobs. Think for a moment about what Steve Jobs did for Apple. He made Apple the most valuable company in the world today, increasing its market cap 115x to its present value of ~$360 billion. He created tens of thousands of jobs for new employees. He made Apple's shareholders filthy rich. To sum it up, he created hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth. How does that not warrant commensurately high pay?
People who are paid "extreme" amounts of money almost always are creating enough value to earn it. That's why I never begrudge someone's financial success. If they're doing well, they're probably bringing at least one person along for the ride with them. Wealth isn't a zero-sum game.
On September 14 2011 13:29 Signet wrote: On tonight's special elections:
Seems like Bob Turner (R) will win Anthony Weiner's (D) former seat in NY-09, while Mark Amodei (R) is cruising to a 15-20 point win in NV-02, which is vacant from Dean Heller (R) being appointed to the Senate.
Turner is currently in the lead by 6 points, and Nate Silver (a statistician who I tend to trust) projects him to win by 10. The voter turnout was a little higher than expected, which tends to help Democrats, but the margin still is against them. In 2008, Obama won this district by 11 points, which is +4 from his 7 point national margin of victory. So in this district at least, things point towards Obama being an underdog in 2012. Although as the article I linked before notes, NY-09 is not a particularly representative district with a heavily Orthodox Jewish population.
NV-02 is a Republican-leaning district, but that margin of victory is pretty substantial.
A republican hasn't held the NY-09 seat for 80 years.... until now.
Turner won because of gay marriage and Israel.
If that is true (the gay marriage part) then that's a tragic commentary on our values as a society.
Turner's victory was mostly a function of Obama's growing unpopularity. I bet that there is some truth to Obama's general antipathy towards Israel turning off Jewish voters, but I doubt that it made a particularly big difference. There have been large elements of the democratic party that have been anti-Israel for decades now, and that has never stopped the Jewish vote from heavily favoring democrats. I don't see why it would change now.
Democrats can spin the loss all they want. Quite frankly, I'd rather that they be dishonest with themselves about why they lost the NY09 race and what their problems actually are. My favorite quote so far is the DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, saying that "NY09 is a very difficult district for democrats." Hysterical! That'd be like a republican saying that Texas is a really difficult state for republicans to win in.
EPT
.
