Abraxas and WinePusher have agreed to do a head to head debate on economics. We will be tackling 4 major topics and I will present my arugments and evidence for why a free market approach is the best approach while Abraxas will present his arguments as to how his approach is the better approach.
This debate will consist of 4 Rounds consisting of 4 Posts. Each round will have its own topic.
Round 1: The Enviroment, Energy and Food Safety
Post 1: Abraxas presents an argument for why government intervention is needed
Post 2: WinePusher presents rebuttal
Post 3: WinePusher presents an argument for why a Free Market Approach is more fundamentally sound
Post 4: Abraxas presents rebuttal
Round 2: Poverty and Healthcare
Post 1: Abraxas presents an argument for why government intervention is needed
Post 2: WinePusher presents rebuttal
Post 3: WinePusher presents an argument for why a Free Market Approach is more fundamentally sound
Post 4: Abraxas presents rebuttal
Round 3: Labor, Discrimination and Civil Rights
Post 1: Abraxas presents an argument for why government intervention is needed
Post 2: WinePusher presents rebuttal
Post 3: WinePusher presents an argument for why a Free Market Approach is more fundamentally sound
Post 4: Abraxas presents rebuttal
Round 4: Fiscal Policy and Monetary Policy
Post 1: Abraxas presents an argument for why government intervention is needed
Post 2: WinePusher presents rebuttal
Post 3: WinePusher presents an argument for why a Free Market Approach is more fundamentally sound
Post 4: Abraxas presents rebuttal
Are Libertarian Economics Fundamentally Sound?
Moderator: Moderators
-
WinePusher
Post #12
Round 2 Post 3.
Poverty
The economic principle that is relevant to the issue of poverty is this: whenever the government subsidizes something, they are promoting it, and whenever the government taxes something, they are discouraging it. A common talking point amoung the left is that Libertarianism is based in fantasy, as opposed to reality, but all one needs to do is look at real life to see how true this principle really is. When it comes to housing, the government actively puts money into the pockets of homeowners or potential homeowners to promote the buying of homes, but when it comes to cigarettes we are constantly seeing state officials trying to pass one tax after another to discourage the usage of cigarettes. What Abraxas has been arguing for in regards to poverty are welfare state policies, where the government actively subsidizes the costs of a poor individual. Going off the economic principle cited above, what Abraxas advocates for would not in any way solve the problem, it would only worsen it and encourage it. What he advocates for has proven itself to be an ineffective means to combat and alleviate poverty. When was poverty at its peak? During the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration, any history of this Administration will expose how severe poverty was at that time, yet historians should expect the opposite since FDR implemented such grand social welfare laws. Rather than poverty being at its peak under this President, it should have been at its lowest.
Let's turn to the free market/private solutions to Poverty. I said in my previous post that poverty is dealt with by the Free Market through Private Enterprise and Charity, but that does not necessarily imply only faith based charities and churches. One very effective tool of the Free Market is Microfinance. The concept behind Microfinance is that donors loan small-medium sums of money to people living in low income communities so that these people can use the money to invest in a long term-productive project. Essentially, Microfinance functions the same as Banks. A Bank will give you a loan for something like, a car, your ownership of this car enhances your net productivity as you can travel freely to and from work and not have to worry about paying for transportation. In the same way, a microfinance lender will lend, say, a former business owner who lost his assets in a stock market crash x amount of dollars and with this money he can invest it in another business or whatever best increases his productivity. Another strong poverty reducer is employment. When you look at the makeup impoverished people, the group of unemployed impoverished people heavily outweighs the group of employed impoverished people. Employment alleviates poverty. The question is, how are you able to create more opportunities for employment? It's an amazingly simple method. (1) A job can only be created by an individual with a reasonable amount of wealth at his disposal. (2) A job will only be created if this individual believes that hiring, paying, and maintaining workers will yield more money than the money he loses in keeping these workers. (3) A job will disappear if the worker stops being an financial asset and becomes a financial liability. Meaning, if the costs of maintaining workers superceeds the profits the business is generating, he/she will lay them off. How could scenario 3 possibly happen? Well, with the help of Abraxas' agenda scenario 3 is becoming a reality. Policies such as a progressive income tax or a high minimum wage will cause job loss, and only worsen the problem of poverty.
Now, nursebenjamin brought to my attention (in a personal message) that when citing the chapter of Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman that is devoted to the subject of alleviating poverty, I omitted Friedman's lengthy treastise on the Negative Income Tax. He's right, I did not pay any attention to that in my post, and I did so voluntarily. I'm arguing for Free Market principles, and even though Milton Friedman, who is the perfect representation of Libertarian thought and scholarship, proposes a Negative Income Tax the policy in and of itself is not in agreement with Libertarian Economic thought. I realize I'm debating Abraxas, but nursebenjamin naively cites Friedman's detailed summary of NIT as some type of whole hearted endorsement when it actually isn't. Friedman has admitted in more than one place that he is a reluctant endorser of NIT, his rational is that if redistribution must be implemented in a society, NIT would be the best route to go out of all the other options. But in the end, NIT is simply another form of socialism which I do not endorse and therefore will not argue on behalf of.
Healthcare
In regards to Healthcare, Abraxas' arguments for why government intervention is needed have been spurious, to say the very least. The only valid point Abraxas has made thus far is the need for government in disease control, however when it comes to healthcare access, primary care, healthcare inflation or the quality of healthcare government has no role and if it tries to assume a role the results would simply be ineffective. Let's run through the problems Abraxas perceives to be wrong with American Healthcare.
(1) He has a problem with inaccessibility to care, and the lack of universal coverage. I challenged him to prove that healthcare will be denied to an individual who does not possess the adequate funds to pay for it, and I challenge him to prove that once again. The fact is someone who can't afford healthcare but needs healthcare, will get healthcare. This makes our healthcare system inherently redistributive. Abraxas also fails to mention that the lack of universal coverage primarily due to the fact that individuals willingly choose not to be covered by an insurance plan. It is their choice not to purchase insurance, thus an individual mandate forcing insurance upon them inhibits their liberties and the principles the Free Society they inhabit. (2) Abraxas suggests that the United States lags behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to healthcare. Well, that depends on the standard of judgement. His argument does hold a certain amount of validity, but unfortunately it fails to take vital facts into consideration. The Swiss Healthcare model is a model the left admires, and is constantly cited as better than U.S Healthcare. But why is that? It's a small population that does not experience a large scale free movement of peoples and has suffered little to no confrontations in its history. You get a completely different situation in the United States: you have an extremely large and racially diverse population with people freely traveling inbetween states and immigrants freely crossing the north and southern border and a history of wars and confrontations that are likely to shorten the average life span of an individual. If the Swiss model were implemented in the US you'd get very different results because of those reasons listed above.
Now, onto the free market initiatives to improve healthcare. The first would be a universalization of Consumer Driven Healthcare. This plan is the most ideal because it makes the consumer the primary controller and decider of his or her own healthcare choices. The second has to do with reducing healthcare costs, and this includes two policies that Abraxas and I have debated extensively in the past: Interstate Insurance Competition and Medical Malpractice Reform. Why does Abraxas not believe these two policies will be effective cost reducers?
Case 1: The Great Society
The Great Society refers to a set of domestic policies aimed at eliminating poverty and racial injustice at the federal level. These policies were implemented by LBJ, who inherited his Presidency after the assassination of JFK. It appears that Abraxas believes that this so called 'War on Poverty' was a grand success, well it wasn't. Thomas Sowell notes that the Black Family began disintegrating at this time, and prior to the Great Society were doing comparatively well for themselves. Jonah Goldberg reinforces the same point I was arguing earlier, that welfare state policies, especially when implemented at a federal level, spawns an unhealthy and socially inept 'entitlement mentality.' If Jonah Goldberg is to partisan for Abraxas, than he should try Charles Murray
Case 2: The Fair Deal
The Fair Deal refers to a set of welfare policies under President Truman. What this deal basically did was enhance and improve already existing welfare policies started by FDR. So, my question to Abraxas is with the implementation of the New Deal, then the Fair Deal, and then the Great Society why is the left today, blaming the free market for the afflictions of poverty that they believe are so great? Essentially, Abraxas agenda has been implemented time and time again yet the problem trying to be fixed has not been. Has he reached the conclusion that welfare in the United States, even though it has been tried and tried over and over again, is not a practical policy?
Case 3: 2009 'Swine Flu Virus' Pandemic
While the eradication of Small Pox can be considered a success of cooperative national governments, the Swine Flu Virus Pandemic can been seen as the fault of the government. The problem was caused by the Federal Government because won't secure its own borders. The swine flu originated in Mexico and was brought to the United States because of unrestricted immigration, thus the failure of the federal government to secure and manage the borders caused this. Not only the, but the production and distribution of vaccines was equally deplorable. There were many instances of vaccine shortages in clinics and hospitals, and the timeline for a vaccine development was inconclusive.
Case 4: The Laffer Curve
This is more of a theoretical argument. A primary component of Welfare is redistribution, and it is the redistribution of income from the wealthy to the poor by means of taxation. What we constantly hear from the left is that taxes need to be raised on the rich at a high rate, perhaps even at a rate of %100. Well, the Laffer Curve begins with the premise that at a %0 tax rate, the government will yield no revenue (obviously) and since the government yields no revenue welfare cannot exist. Well, the model goes onto predict that a tax rate of or near %100 will also cause the government to yield no revenue:
Thus, there exists an optimal point of taxation that should be moderate-low that would allow government to generate revenue and at the same time, for taxes to be levied. However, the problem is that as the Welfare State is expanded, government needs to put more funds into it and therefore generate more funds and therefore raise taxes putting the curve closer and closer to that %100 mark, which would render the entire upper class (whose income is being redistributed) useless.
Case Citations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society
http://sumpolitics.wordpress.com/2008/0 ... t-society/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fair_Deal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
Poverty
The economic principle that is relevant to the issue of poverty is this: whenever the government subsidizes something, they are promoting it, and whenever the government taxes something, they are discouraging it. A common talking point amoung the left is that Libertarianism is based in fantasy, as opposed to reality, but all one needs to do is look at real life to see how true this principle really is. When it comes to housing, the government actively puts money into the pockets of homeowners or potential homeowners to promote the buying of homes, but when it comes to cigarettes we are constantly seeing state officials trying to pass one tax after another to discourage the usage of cigarettes. What Abraxas has been arguing for in regards to poverty are welfare state policies, where the government actively subsidizes the costs of a poor individual. Going off the economic principle cited above, what Abraxas advocates for would not in any way solve the problem, it would only worsen it and encourage it. What he advocates for has proven itself to be an ineffective means to combat and alleviate poverty. When was poverty at its peak? During the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration, any history of this Administration will expose how severe poverty was at that time, yet historians should expect the opposite since FDR implemented such grand social welfare laws. Rather than poverty being at its peak under this President, it should have been at its lowest.
Let's turn to the free market/private solutions to Poverty. I said in my previous post that poverty is dealt with by the Free Market through Private Enterprise and Charity, but that does not necessarily imply only faith based charities and churches. One very effective tool of the Free Market is Microfinance. The concept behind Microfinance is that donors loan small-medium sums of money to people living in low income communities so that these people can use the money to invest in a long term-productive project. Essentially, Microfinance functions the same as Banks. A Bank will give you a loan for something like, a car, your ownership of this car enhances your net productivity as you can travel freely to and from work and not have to worry about paying for transportation. In the same way, a microfinance lender will lend, say, a former business owner who lost his assets in a stock market crash x amount of dollars and with this money he can invest it in another business or whatever best increases his productivity. Another strong poverty reducer is employment. When you look at the makeup impoverished people, the group of unemployed impoverished people heavily outweighs the group of employed impoverished people. Employment alleviates poverty. The question is, how are you able to create more opportunities for employment? It's an amazingly simple method. (1) A job can only be created by an individual with a reasonable amount of wealth at his disposal. (2) A job will only be created if this individual believes that hiring, paying, and maintaining workers will yield more money than the money he loses in keeping these workers. (3) A job will disappear if the worker stops being an financial asset and becomes a financial liability. Meaning, if the costs of maintaining workers superceeds the profits the business is generating, he/she will lay them off. How could scenario 3 possibly happen? Well, with the help of Abraxas' agenda scenario 3 is becoming a reality. Policies such as a progressive income tax or a high minimum wage will cause job loss, and only worsen the problem of poverty.
Now, nursebenjamin brought to my attention (in a personal message) that when citing the chapter of Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman that is devoted to the subject of alleviating poverty, I omitted Friedman's lengthy treastise on the Negative Income Tax. He's right, I did not pay any attention to that in my post, and I did so voluntarily. I'm arguing for Free Market principles, and even though Milton Friedman, who is the perfect representation of Libertarian thought and scholarship, proposes a Negative Income Tax the policy in and of itself is not in agreement with Libertarian Economic thought. I realize I'm debating Abraxas, but nursebenjamin naively cites Friedman's detailed summary of NIT as some type of whole hearted endorsement when it actually isn't. Friedman has admitted in more than one place that he is a reluctant endorser of NIT, his rational is that if redistribution must be implemented in a society, NIT would be the best route to go out of all the other options. But in the end, NIT is simply another form of socialism which I do not endorse and therefore will not argue on behalf of.
Healthcare
In regards to Healthcare, Abraxas' arguments for why government intervention is needed have been spurious, to say the very least. The only valid point Abraxas has made thus far is the need for government in disease control, however when it comes to healthcare access, primary care, healthcare inflation or the quality of healthcare government has no role and if it tries to assume a role the results would simply be ineffective. Let's run through the problems Abraxas perceives to be wrong with American Healthcare.
(1) He has a problem with inaccessibility to care, and the lack of universal coverage. I challenged him to prove that healthcare will be denied to an individual who does not possess the adequate funds to pay for it, and I challenge him to prove that once again. The fact is someone who can't afford healthcare but needs healthcare, will get healthcare. This makes our healthcare system inherently redistributive. Abraxas also fails to mention that the lack of universal coverage primarily due to the fact that individuals willingly choose not to be covered by an insurance plan. It is their choice not to purchase insurance, thus an individual mandate forcing insurance upon them inhibits their liberties and the principles the Free Society they inhabit. (2) Abraxas suggests that the United States lags behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to healthcare. Well, that depends on the standard of judgement. His argument does hold a certain amount of validity, but unfortunately it fails to take vital facts into consideration. The Swiss Healthcare model is a model the left admires, and is constantly cited as better than U.S Healthcare. But why is that? It's a small population that does not experience a large scale free movement of peoples and has suffered little to no confrontations in its history. You get a completely different situation in the United States: you have an extremely large and racially diverse population with people freely traveling inbetween states and immigrants freely crossing the north and southern border and a history of wars and confrontations that are likely to shorten the average life span of an individual. If the Swiss model were implemented in the US you'd get very different results because of those reasons listed above.
Now, onto the free market initiatives to improve healthcare. The first would be a universalization of Consumer Driven Healthcare. This plan is the most ideal because it makes the consumer the primary controller and decider of his or her own healthcare choices. The second has to do with reducing healthcare costs, and this includes two policies that Abraxas and I have debated extensively in the past: Interstate Insurance Competition and Medical Malpractice Reform. Why does Abraxas not believe these two policies will be effective cost reducers?
Case 1: The Great Society
The Great Society refers to a set of domestic policies aimed at eliminating poverty and racial injustice at the federal level. These policies were implemented by LBJ, who inherited his Presidency after the assassination of JFK. It appears that Abraxas believes that this so called 'War on Poverty' was a grand success, well it wasn't. Thomas Sowell notes that the Black Family began disintegrating at this time, and prior to the Great Society were doing comparatively well for themselves. Jonah Goldberg reinforces the same point I was arguing earlier, that welfare state policies, especially when implemented at a federal level, spawns an unhealthy and socially inept 'entitlement mentality.' If Jonah Goldberg is to partisan for Abraxas, than he should try Charles Murray
Case 2: The Fair Deal
The Fair Deal refers to a set of welfare policies under President Truman. What this deal basically did was enhance and improve already existing welfare policies started by FDR. So, my question to Abraxas is with the implementation of the New Deal, then the Fair Deal, and then the Great Society why is the left today, blaming the free market for the afflictions of poverty that they believe are so great? Essentially, Abraxas agenda has been implemented time and time again yet the problem trying to be fixed has not been. Has he reached the conclusion that welfare in the United States, even though it has been tried and tried over and over again, is not a practical policy?
Case 3: 2009 'Swine Flu Virus' Pandemic
While the eradication of Small Pox can be considered a success of cooperative national governments, the Swine Flu Virus Pandemic can been seen as the fault of the government. The problem was caused by the Federal Government because won't secure its own borders. The swine flu originated in Mexico and was brought to the United States because of unrestricted immigration, thus the failure of the federal government to secure and manage the borders caused this. Not only the, but the production and distribution of vaccines was equally deplorable. There were many instances of vaccine shortages in clinics and hospitals, and the timeline for a vaccine development was inconclusive.
Case 4: The Laffer Curve
This is more of a theoretical argument. A primary component of Welfare is redistribution, and it is the redistribution of income from the wealthy to the poor by means of taxation. What we constantly hear from the left is that taxes need to be raised on the rich at a high rate, perhaps even at a rate of %100. Well, the Laffer Curve begins with the premise that at a %0 tax rate, the government will yield no revenue (obviously) and since the government yields no revenue welfare cannot exist. Well, the model goes onto predict that a tax rate of or near %100 will also cause the government to yield no revenue:
Thus, there exists an optimal point of taxation that should be moderate-low that would allow government to generate revenue and at the same time, for taxes to be levied. However, the problem is that as the Welfare State is expanded, government needs to put more funds into it and therefore generate more funds and therefore raise taxes putting the curve closer and closer to that %100 mark, which would render the entire upper class (whose income is being redistributed) useless.
Case Citations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society
http://sumpolitics.wordpress.com/2008/0 ... t-society/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fair_Deal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
-
WinePusher
Post #13
Round 2 Post 3.
Poverty
The economic principle that is relevant to the issue of poverty is this: whenever the government subsidizes something, they are promoting it, and whenever the government taxes something, they are discouraging it. A common talking point amoung the left is that Libertarianism is based in fantasy, as opposed to reality, but all one needs to do is look at real life to see how true this principle really is. When it comes to housing, the government actively puts money into the pockets of homeowners or potential homeowners to promote the buying of homes, but when it comes to cigarettes we are constantly seeing state officials trying to pass one tax after another to discourage the usage of cigarettes. What Abraxas has been arguing for in regards to poverty are welfare state policies, where the government actively subsidizes the costs of a poor individual. Going off the economic principle cited above, what Abraxas advocates for would not in any way solve the problem, it would only worsen it and encourage it. What he advocates for has proven itself to be an ineffective means to combat and alleviate poverty. When was poverty at its peak? During the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration, any history of this Administration will expose how severe poverty was at that time, yet historians should expect the opposite since FDR implemented such grand social welfare laws. Rather than poverty being at its peak under this President, it should have been at its lowest.
Let's turn to the free market/private solutions to Poverty. I said in my previous post that poverty is dealt with by the Free Market through Private Enterprise and Charity, but that does not necessarily imply only faith based charities and churches. One very effective tool of the Free Market is Microfinance. The concept behind Microfinance is that donors loan small-medium sums of money to people living in low income communities so that these people can use the money to invest in a long term-productive project. Essentially, Microfinance functions the same as Banks. A Bank will give you a loan for something like, a car, your ownership of this car enhances your net productivity as you can travel freely to and from work and not have to worry about paying for transportation. In the same way, a microfinance lender will lend, say, a former business owner who lost his assets in a stock market crash x amount of dollars and with this money he can invest it in another business or whatever best increases his productivity. Another strong poverty reducer is employment. When you look at the makeup impoverished people, the group of unemployed impoverished people heavily outweighs the group of employed impoverished people. Employment alleviates poverty. The question is, how are you able to create more opportunities for employment? It's an amazingly simple method. (1) A job can only be created by an individual with a reasonable amount of wealth at his disposal. (2) A job will only be created if this individual believes that hiring, paying, and maintaining workers will yield more money than the money he loses in keeping these workers. (3) A job will disappear if the worker stops being an financial asset and becomes a financial liability. Meaning, if the costs of maintaining workers superceeds the profits the business is generating, he/she will lay them off. How could scenario 3 possibly happen? Well, with the help of Abraxas' agenda scenario 3 is becoming a reality. Policies such as a progressive income tax or a high minimum wage will cause job loss, and only worsen the problem of poverty.
Now, nursebenjamin brought to my attention (in a personal message) that when citing the chapter of Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman that is devoted to the subject of alleviating poverty, I omitted Friedman's lengthy treastise on the Negative Income Tax. He's right, I did not pay any attention to that in my post, and I did so voluntarily. I'm arguing for Free Market principles, and even though Milton Friedman, who is the perfect representation of Libertarian thought and scholarship, proposes a Negative Income Tax the policy in and of itself is not in agreement with Libertarian Economic thought. I realize I'm debating Abraxas, but nursebenjamin naively cites Friedman's detailed summary of NIT as some type of whole hearted endorsement when it actually isn't. Friedman has admitted in more than one place that he is a reluctant endorser of NIT, his rational is that if redistribution must be implemented in a society, NIT would be the best route to go out of all the other options. But in the end, NIT is simply another form of socialism which I do not endorse and therefore will not argue on behalf of.
Healthcare
In regards to Healthcare, Abraxas' arguments for why government intervention is needed have been spurious, to say the very least. The only valid point Abraxas has made thus far is the need for government in disease control, however when it comes to healthcare access, primary care, healthcare inflation or the quality of healthcare government has no role and if it tries to assume a role the results would simply be ineffective. Let's run through the problems Abraxas perceives to be wrong with American Healthcare.
(1) He has a problem with inaccessibility to care, and the lack of universal coverage. I challenged him to prove that healthcare will be denied to an individual who does not possess the adequate funds to pay for it, and I challenge him to prove that once again. The fact is someone who can't afford healthcare but needs healthcare, will get healthcare. This makes our healthcare system inherently redistributive. Abraxas also fails to mention that the lack of universal coverage primarily due to the fact that individuals willingly choose not to be covered by an insurance plan. It is their choice not to purchase insurance, thus an individual mandate forcing insurance upon them inhibits their liberties and the principles the Free Society they inhabit. (2) Abraxas suggests that the United States lags behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to healthcare. Well, that depends on the standard of judgement. His argument does hold a certain amount of validity, but unfortunately it fails to take vital facts into consideration. The Swiss Healthcare model is a model the left admires, and is constantly cited as better than U.S Healthcare. But why is that? It's a small population that does not experience a large scale free movement of peoples and has suffered little to no confrontations in its history. You get a completely different situation in the United States: you have an extremely large and racially diverse population with people freely traveling inbetween states and immigrants freely crossing the north and southern border and a history of wars and confrontations that are likely to shorten the average life span of an individual. If the Swiss model were implemented in the US you'd get very different results because of those reasons listed above.
Now, onto the free market initiatives to improve healthcare. The first would be a universalization of Consumer Driven Healthcare. This plan is the most ideal because it makes the consumer the primary controller and decider of his or her own healthcare choices. The second has to do with reducing healthcare costs, and this includes two policies that Abraxas and I have debated extensively in the past: Interstate Insurance Competition and Medical Malpractice Reform. Why does Abraxas not believe these two policies will be effective cost reducers?
Case 1: The Great Society
The Great Society refers to a set of domestic policies aimed at eliminating poverty and racial injustice at the federal level. These policies were implemented by LBJ, who inherited his Presidency after the assassination of JFK. It appears that Abraxas believes that this so called 'War on Poverty' was a grand success, well it wasn't. Thomas Sowell notes that the Black Family began disintegrating at this time, and prior to the Great Society were doing comparatively well for themselves. Jonah Goldberg reinforces the same point I was arguing earlier, that welfare state policies, especially when implemented at a federal level, spawns an unhealthy and socially inept 'entitlement mentality.' If Jonah Goldberg is to partisan for Abraxas, than he should try Losing Ground by Charles Murray.
Case 2: The Fair Deal
The Fair Deal refers to a set of welfare policies under President Truman. What this deal basically did was enhance and improve already existing welfare policies started by FDR. So, my question to Abraxas is with the implementation of the New Deal, then the Fair Deal, and then the Great Society why is the left today, blaming the free market for the afflictions of poverty that they believe are so great? Essentially, Abraxas agenda has been implemented time and time again yet the problem trying to be fixed has not been. Has he reached the conclusion that welfare in the United States, even though it has been tried and tried over and over again, is not a practical policy?
Case 3: 2009 'Swine Flu Virus' Pandemic
While the eradication of Small Pox can be considered a success of cooperative national governments, the Swine Flu Virus Pandemic can been seen as the fault of the government. The problem was caused by the Federal Government because won't secure its own borders. The swine flu originated in Mexico and was brought to the United States because of unrestricted immigration, thus the failure of the federal government to secure and manage the borders caused this. Not only the, but the production and distribution of vaccines was equally deplorable. There were many instances of vaccine shortages in clinics and hospitals, and the timeline for a vaccine development was inconclusive.
Case 4: The Laffer Curve
This is more of a theoretical argument. A primary component of Welfare is redistribution, and it is the redistribution of income from the wealthy to the poor by means of taxation. What we constantly hear from the left is that taxes need to be raised on the rich at a high rate, perhaps even at a rate of %100. Well, the Laffer Curve begins with the premise that at a %0 tax rate, the government will yield no revenue (obviously) and since the government yields no revenue welfare cannot exist. Well, the model goes onto predict that a tax rate of or near %100 will also cause the government to yield no revenue:
Thus, there exists an optimal point of taxation that should be moderate-low that would allow government to generate revenue and at the same time, for taxes to be levied. However, the problem is that as the Welfare State is expanded, government needs to put more funds into it and therefore generate more funds and therefore raise taxes putting the curve closer and closer to that %100 mark, which would render the entire upper class (whose income is being redistributed) useless.
Case Citations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society
http://sumpolitics.wordpress.com/2008/0 ... t-society/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fair_Deal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
Poverty
The economic principle that is relevant to the issue of poverty is this: whenever the government subsidizes something, they are promoting it, and whenever the government taxes something, they are discouraging it. A common talking point amoung the left is that Libertarianism is based in fantasy, as opposed to reality, but all one needs to do is look at real life to see how true this principle really is. When it comes to housing, the government actively puts money into the pockets of homeowners or potential homeowners to promote the buying of homes, but when it comes to cigarettes we are constantly seeing state officials trying to pass one tax after another to discourage the usage of cigarettes. What Abraxas has been arguing for in regards to poverty are welfare state policies, where the government actively subsidizes the costs of a poor individual. Going off the economic principle cited above, what Abraxas advocates for would not in any way solve the problem, it would only worsen it and encourage it. What he advocates for has proven itself to be an ineffective means to combat and alleviate poverty. When was poverty at its peak? During the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration, any history of this Administration will expose how severe poverty was at that time, yet historians should expect the opposite since FDR implemented such grand social welfare laws. Rather than poverty being at its peak under this President, it should have been at its lowest.
Let's turn to the free market/private solutions to Poverty. I said in my previous post that poverty is dealt with by the Free Market through Private Enterprise and Charity, but that does not necessarily imply only faith based charities and churches. One very effective tool of the Free Market is Microfinance. The concept behind Microfinance is that donors loan small-medium sums of money to people living in low income communities so that these people can use the money to invest in a long term-productive project. Essentially, Microfinance functions the same as Banks. A Bank will give you a loan for something like, a car, your ownership of this car enhances your net productivity as you can travel freely to and from work and not have to worry about paying for transportation. In the same way, a microfinance lender will lend, say, a former business owner who lost his assets in a stock market crash x amount of dollars and with this money he can invest it in another business or whatever best increases his productivity. Another strong poverty reducer is employment. When you look at the makeup impoverished people, the group of unemployed impoverished people heavily outweighs the group of employed impoverished people. Employment alleviates poverty. The question is, how are you able to create more opportunities for employment? It's an amazingly simple method. (1) A job can only be created by an individual with a reasonable amount of wealth at his disposal. (2) A job will only be created if this individual believes that hiring, paying, and maintaining workers will yield more money than the money he loses in keeping these workers. (3) A job will disappear if the worker stops being an financial asset and becomes a financial liability. Meaning, if the costs of maintaining workers superceeds the profits the business is generating, he/she will lay them off. How could scenario 3 possibly happen? Well, with the help of Abraxas' agenda scenario 3 is becoming a reality. Policies such as a progressive income tax or a high minimum wage will cause job loss, and only worsen the problem of poverty.
Now, nursebenjamin brought to my attention (in a personal message) that when citing the chapter of Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman that is devoted to the subject of alleviating poverty, I omitted Friedman's lengthy treastise on the Negative Income Tax. He's right, I did not pay any attention to that in my post, and I did so voluntarily. I'm arguing for Free Market principles, and even though Milton Friedman, who is the perfect representation of Libertarian thought and scholarship, proposes a Negative Income Tax the policy in and of itself is not in agreement with Libertarian Economic thought. I realize I'm debating Abraxas, but nursebenjamin naively cites Friedman's detailed summary of NIT as some type of whole hearted endorsement when it actually isn't. Friedman has admitted in more than one place that he is a reluctant endorser of NIT, his rational is that if redistribution must be implemented in a society, NIT would be the best route to go out of all the other options. But in the end, NIT is simply another form of socialism which I do not endorse and therefore will not argue on behalf of.
Healthcare
In regards to Healthcare, Abraxas' arguments for why government intervention is needed have been spurious, to say the very least. The only valid point Abraxas has made thus far is the need for government in disease control, however when it comes to healthcare access, primary care, healthcare inflation or the quality of healthcare government has no role and if it tries to assume a role the results would simply be ineffective. Let's run through the problems Abraxas perceives to be wrong with American Healthcare.
(1) He has a problem with inaccessibility to care, and the lack of universal coverage. I challenged him to prove that healthcare will be denied to an individual who does not possess the adequate funds to pay for it, and I challenge him to prove that once again. The fact is someone who can't afford healthcare but needs healthcare, will get healthcare. This makes our healthcare system inherently redistributive. Abraxas also fails to mention that the lack of universal coverage primarily due to the fact that individuals willingly choose not to be covered by an insurance plan. It is their choice not to purchase insurance, thus an individual mandate forcing insurance upon them inhibits their liberties and the principles the Free Society they inhabit. (2) Abraxas suggests that the United States lags behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to healthcare. Well, that depends on the standard of judgement. His argument does hold a certain amount of validity, but unfortunately it fails to take vital facts into consideration. The Swiss Healthcare model is a model the left admires, and is constantly cited as better than U.S Healthcare. But why is that? It's a small population that does not experience a large scale free movement of peoples and has suffered little to no confrontations in its history. You get a completely different situation in the United States: you have an extremely large and racially diverse population with people freely traveling inbetween states and immigrants freely crossing the north and southern border and a history of wars and confrontations that are likely to shorten the average life span of an individual. If the Swiss model were implemented in the US you'd get very different results because of those reasons listed above.
Now, onto the free market initiatives to improve healthcare. The first would be a universalization of Consumer Driven Healthcare. This plan is the most ideal because it makes the consumer the primary controller and decider of his or her own healthcare choices. The second has to do with reducing healthcare costs, and this includes two policies that Abraxas and I have debated extensively in the past: Interstate Insurance Competition and Medical Malpractice Reform. Why does Abraxas not believe these two policies will be effective cost reducers?
Case 1: The Great Society
The Great Society refers to a set of domestic policies aimed at eliminating poverty and racial injustice at the federal level. These policies were implemented by LBJ, who inherited his Presidency after the assassination of JFK. It appears that Abraxas believes that this so called 'War on Poverty' was a grand success, well it wasn't. Thomas Sowell notes that the Black Family began disintegrating at this time, and prior to the Great Society were doing comparatively well for themselves. Jonah Goldberg reinforces the same point I was arguing earlier, that welfare state policies, especially when implemented at a federal level, spawns an unhealthy and socially inept 'entitlement mentality.' If Jonah Goldberg is to partisan for Abraxas, than he should try Losing Ground by Charles Murray.
Case 2: The Fair Deal
The Fair Deal refers to a set of welfare policies under President Truman. What this deal basically did was enhance and improve already existing welfare policies started by FDR. So, my question to Abraxas is with the implementation of the New Deal, then the Fair Deal, and then the Great Society why is the left today, blaming the free market for the afflictions of poverty that they believe are so great? Essentially, Abraxas agenda has been implemented time and time again yet the problem trying to be fixed has not been. Has he reached the conclusion that welfare in the United States, even though it has been tried and tried over and over again, is not a practical policy?
Case 3: 2009 'Swine Flu Virus' Pandemic
While the eradication of Small Pox can be considered a success of cooperative national governments, the Swine Flu Virus Pandemic can been seen as the fault of the government. The problem was caused by the Federal Government because won't secure its own borders. The swine flu originated in Mexico and was brought to the United States because of unrestricted immigration, thus the failure of the federal government to secure and manage the borders caused this. Not only the, but the production and distribution of vaccines was equally deplorable. There were many instances of vaccine shortages in clinics and hospitals, and the timeline for a vaccine development was inconclusive.
Case 4: The Laffer Curve
This is more of a theoretical argument. A primary component of Welfare is redistribution, and it is the redistribution of income from the wealthy to the poor by means of taxation. What we constantly hear from the left is that taxes need to be raised on the rich at a high rate, perhaps even at a rate of %100. Well, the Laffer Curve begins with the premise that at a %0 tax rate, the government will yield no revenue (obviously) and since the government yields no revenue welfare cannot exist. Well, the model goes onto predict that a tax rate of or near %100 will also cause the government to yield no revenue:
Thus, there exists an optimal point of taxation that should be moderate-low that would allow government to generate revenue and at the same time, for taxes to be levied. However, the problem is that as the Welfare State is expanded, government needs to put more funds into it and therefore generate more funds and therefore raise taxes putting the curve closer and closer to that %100 mark, which would render the entire upper class (whose income is being redistributed) useless.
Case Citations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society
http://sumpolitics.wordpress.com/2008/0 ... t-society/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fair_Deal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
Post #14
Before I begin my rebuttal, let me note that first, the major post of each participant in a round is for promoting your own ideas, not arguing with the person you are debating with. Much of this post belonged in the previous one. Secondly, I note, once again, nowhere did you provide any free market solutions to the problems, you simply attacked the government's ability to solve the problem. I believe your argument was supposed to be that free market principles could solve the problem or alleviate it, not that the problem was insurmountable.WinePusher wrote:Round 2 Post 3.
Not necessarily so. While this can be the case, the government taxes all kinds of things it also encourages, such as earning an income. You seem to be operating under an erroneous interpretation common to libertarians that taxes are some kind of punishment. Instead, taxes, for the most part, are more akin to fees for usage of the services of the government. Further, there exists a distinction between increasing price, which is what happens in the case of cigarette and gas taxes, and reducing added value, as is what happens with income tax. Taking your argument to its ultimate absurd conclusion, nobody should ever want to earn income, or at least not beyond a certain point, because when they do, taxes are higher. However, the thing is, while it costs more per dollar to be in a higher tax bracket, you have more dollars and so are still better off than you would have been under a lower tax bracket.Poverty
The economic principle that is relevant to the issue of poverty is this: whenever the government subsidizes something, they are promoting it, and whenever the government taxes something, they are discouraging it. A common talking point amoung the left is that Libertarianism is based in fantasy, as opposed to reality, but all one needs to do is look at real life to see how true this principle really is. When it comes to housing, the government actively puts money into the pockets of homeowners or potential homeowners to promote the buying of homes, but when it comes to cigarettes we are constantly seeing state officials trying to pass one tax after another to discourage the usage of cigarettes.
Complete nonsense. Per the above, the reverse is true. From the perspective of the individual, it doesn't matter a great deal the source of income so much as the quality of life. That the government pays a token amount to prevent you from ending up on the street and in starvation does not mean you would get anything comparable to a quality of life you would have with having the level of income you would from having employment. Poverty discourages itself by virtue of the fact it is poverty and your argument amounts to a government handing out flu shots encourages people to get the flu. Making the effects less damaging to those afflicted in no way encourages one to get the affliction.What Abraxas has been arguing for in regards to poverty are welfare state policies, where the government actively subsidizes the costs of a poor individual. Going off the economic principle cited above, what Abraxas advocates for would not in any way solve the problem, it would only worsen it and encourage it.
Actually, as demonstrated by statistical evidence from the US and the world as a whole in my first post, the exact opposite is true.What he advocates for has proven itself to be an ineffective means to combat and alleviate poverty.
If poverty laws worked on the principles of time travel and magic, yes, you would expect policies created between 1933 and 1936 would have retroactively solved the economic slide in 1928-1933 that began the Great Depression. Instead, what you saw was, a steady constant growth trend upwards between 33 and 40 with the brief exception of 37 to the point where by 1936 GDP had recovered to pre-Depression levels and by 1940 every job lost to the Depression had been replaced (though unemployment rates had not yet recovered fully before WWII).When was poverty at its peak? During the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration, any history of this Administration will expose how severe poverty was at that time, yet historians should expect the opposite since FDR implemented such grand social welfare laws. Rather than poverty being at its peak under this President, it should have been at its lowest.
What we saw was when the New Deal was implemented, the economy started to recover going forward, and we could use a little of that recovery right now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal
You haven't demonstrated private charity helps at all, to what degree, and how much of that private charity exists for a cause other than the government offering tax breaks to those who provide it, which is yet another form of government regulation helping to fight poverty. I had hoped you would provide some facts and figures about how much private charity helps the poor, as I did with welfare, but alas, I don't see anything supporting this assertion; only the assertion itself.Let's turn to the free market/private solutions to Poverty. I said in my previous post that poverty is dealt with by the Free Market through Private Enterprise and Charity, but that does not necessarily imply only faith based charities and churches.
Further, actually you did imply that it only does it through private charity, as when I proposed that Libertarians hold the idea that a free market will create jobs to alleviate poverty, you called it, and I quote, "a mischaracterization of the Libertarian view of poverty" and "'unrestrained capitalism creating jobs' doesn't seem to be in there". Amazing, isn't it, that my "complete mischaracterization" is an upcoming argument of yours, isn't it?
There is no evidence microfinance can work in a country like ours where it takes thousands of dollars to start up businesses in most economic sectors and competition is so intense in the rest. Where it has been tried, the results have been less than impressive. Of the six quantitative studies done microfinance as of 2008, only one found it unambiguously helped with poverty to a significant degree and much of the research shows it ineffective unless the person receiving the finance already owns a business, where as it does not seem effective for starting new enterprise.One very effective tool of the Free Market is Microfinance. The concept behind Microfinance is that donors loan small-medium sums of money to people living in low income communities so that these people can use the money to invest in a long term-productive project. Essentially, Microfinance functions the same as Banks. A Bank will give you a loan for something like, a car, your ownership of this car enhances your net productivity as you can travel freely to and from work and not have to worry about paying for transportation. In the same way, a microfinance lender will lend, say, a former business owner who lost his assets in a stock market crash x amount of dollars and with this money he can invest it in another business or whatever best increases his productivity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfinan ... ng_poverty
Not actually correct. Groups can create jobs too, even where they don't have all that much spare wealth available, depending on the size, scope, and permanence of the job.Another strong poverty reducer is employment. When you look at the makeup impoverished people, the group of unemployed impoverished people heavily outweighs the group of employed impoverished people. Employment alleviates poverty. The question is, how are you able to create more opportunities for employment? It's an amazingly simple method. (1) A job can only be created by an individual with a reasonable amount of wealth at his disposal.
Again, not true. Police officers as a rule are not hired for their expected long term economic contributions to the community.(2) A job will only be created if this individual believes that hiring, paying, and maintaining workers will yield more money than the money he loses in keeping these workers.
See above.(3) A job will disappear if the worker stops being an financial asset and becomes a financial liability. Meaning, if the costs of maintaining workers superceeds the profits the business is generating, he/she will lay them off.
Hey look, it is that "complete mischaracterization" of the libertarian position I argued against in my first post of the round.How could scenario 3 possibly happen? Well, with the help of Abraxas' agenda scenario 3 is becoming a reality. Policies such as a progressive income tax or a high minimum wage will cause job loss, and only worsen the problem of poverty.
Income taxes have absolutely nothing to do with anything, as income only applied to how much of the payroll ends up staying with the worker. Regardless of how high or low it is, the business pays the same either way, what you are looking at is corporate taxes on profits, however, even then, if they reinvest the money in the corporation, they don't get taxed on it because it is a business expense. What you are talking about is the CEO having to pay a higher income tax somehow hurting the business, because, the CEO is incline to have the company overall make less money if he can't keep as much of it according to this argument.
The first problem is nothing about top company officials having to pay more of their income in taxes makes the workers as they are employed less profitable. Second, as you already pointed out, the company already gets rid of all unprofitable workers, per point three. Losing additional workers at this point would reduce the amount they end up earning. Sure, their taxes would go down, but only through a greater reduction in their income, leaving them worse off.
As for minimum wage, there is no evidence minimum wage has any significant effect on on employment. Some studies show it even has a positive effect on employment as by increasing the level of money in circulation for consumer spending, it increases demand in that market sector and others.
Put another way, and more accurately, your model of free market poverty alleviation has been determined to be completely and totally inadequate by the individual you cite as a sort of Paragon Libertarian and so he reluctantly agreed the best way to fight poverty is to have government redistribute wealth.Now, nursebenjamin brought to my attention (in a personal message) that when citing the chapter of Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman that is devoted to the subject of alleviating poverty, I omitted Friedman's lengthy treastise on the Negative Income Tax. He's right, I did not pay any attention to that in my post, and I did so voluntarily. I'm arguing for Free Market principles, and even though Milton Friedman, who is the perfect representation of Libertarian thought and scholarship, proposes a Negative Income Tax the policy in and of itself is not in agreement with Libertarian Economic thought. I realize I'm debating Abraxas, but nursebenjamin naively cites Friedman's detailed summary of NIT as some type of whole hearted endorsement when it actually isn't. Friedman has admitted in more than one place that he is a reluctant endorser of NIT, his rational is that if redistribution must be implemented in a society, NIT would be the best route to go out of all the other options. But in the end, NIT is simply another form of socialism which I do not endorse and therefore will not argue on behalf of.
You misrepresent his argument, implying he is against government intervention but the NIT is the way to do it if they do decide to intervene. This is entirely false. He said "Suppose one accepts, as I do, this line of reasoning as justifying governmental action to alleviate poverty; to set, as it were. a floor under the standard of life of every person in the community." Indeed, he explicitly endorses the justice of the government intervening, only expressing reluctance that the free market cannot and will not solve the problem.
http://books.cat-v.org/economics/capita ... chapter_12
Why do you break with him on this issue when appealing to his economic models for so much else?
Evidence begs to differ, as I presented. What evidence do you have?Healthcare
In regards to Healthcare, Abraxas' arguments for why government intervention is needed have been spurious, to say the very least. The only valid point Abraxas has made thus far is the need for government in disease control, however when it comes to healthcare access, primary care, healthcare inflation or the quality of healthcare government has no role and if it tries to assume a role the results would simply be ineffective.
I have before, I can again. Denying that rationing takes place in America is simple denial.Let's run through the problems Abraxas perceives to be wrong with American Healthcare.
(1) He has a problem with inaccessibility to care, and the lack of universal coverage. I challenged him to prove that healthcare will be denied to an individual who does not possess the adequate funds to pay for it, and I challenge him to prove that once again.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =106168331
The woman could not afford both food and medicine and because she chose to feed her family, she was denied the drugs she needed to not die.
Only to a point. They will get some care at a moment of crisis, but by that point is is often too late. They will not get things like ongoing medical treatments for things like AIDS antiviral drugs unless they can pay for them.The fact is someone who can't afford healthcare but needs healthcare, will get healthcare.
What an absolutely disgusting sentiment.This makes our healthcare system inherently redistributive. Abraxas also fails to mention that the lack of universal coverage primarily due to the fact that individuals willingly choose not to be covered by an insurance plan. It is their choice not to purchase insurance, thus an individual mandate forcing insurance upon them inhibits their liberties and the principles the Free Society they inhabit.
Choose not to buy health insurance? Like they choose Wheaties or Corn Flakes? At some point, they made the decision to not be covered in the event of a medical emergency that could ruin them and their family for as long as they live, assuming said emergency doesn't kill them first?
The fact is most people who don't have it in the US can't afford it or are uninsurable due to things like preexisting conditions.
What I find most disturbing about your post is this completely detached from reality way in which you speak about preventing people from getting the medicine they need to live or destroying their finances for decades as part of this utopian "Free Society". Nothing could be further from the truth. This isn't freedom you are talking about, it is slavery to accountants and adjustors who weigh life and suffering against piles of money and only the most blind fail to see which they will choose every time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninsured_ ... ted_States
I never mentioned the Swiss model, however, your reasoning doesn't hold up. If it did, the health systems of the European Union would have collapsed by now due to the free travel between member states and the much larger population. The rest of Europe, like France, has most certainly faced large scale conflicts before and yet still has a much better healthcare system. Why would the US be unable to implement a model like most of the EU members? What evidence do you have? Without evidence, as you have yet to present any this entire post, all you have is assertion.(2) Abraxas suggests that the United States lags behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to healthcare. Well, that depends on the standard of judgement. His argument does hold a certain amount of validity, but unfortunately it fails to take vital facts into consideration. The Swiss Healthcare model is a model the left admires, and is constantly cited as better than U.S Healthcare. But why is that? It's a small population that does not experience a large scale free movement of peoples and has suffered little to no confrontations in its history. You get a completely different situation in the United States: you have an extremely large and racially diverse population with people freely traveling inbetween states and immigrants freely crossing the north and southern border and a history of wars and confrontations that are likely to shorten the average life span of an individual. If the Swiss model were implemented in the US you'd get very different results because of those reasons listed above.
No, it makes the consumer's wallet the primary driver, a government funded healthcare system would give the consumer the greatest degree of control as they could select any system they needed without the restriction of coming up with the funds for it.Now, onto the free market initiatives to improve healthcare. The first would be a universalization of Consumer Driven Healthcare. This plan is the most ideal because it makes the consumer the primary controller and decider of his or her own healthcare choices.
Indeed, where this has been tried, it saw an increase in preventable death amongst low income families.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer-d ... on_impacts
"Most ideal" indeed.
Because they have studies the impact of both and found them to be only minimally influential. Tort reform would is estimated to maybe save 54 Billlion and Interstate Insurance Competition maybe a quarter that a decade of a 2,500 billion dollar hole. Tort Reform would be anti-free market anyway; it is by definition a government regulation of the market.The second has to do with reducing healthcare costs, and this includes two policies that Abraxas and I have debated extensively in the past: Interstate Insurance Competition and Medical Malpractice Reform. Why does Abraxas not believe these two policies will be effective cost reducers?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tort_refor ... state.html
I provided facts and figures and statistics, you provided one guy's opinion. I feel my case is already better supported without providing additional commentary here.Case 1: The Great Society
The Great Society refers to a set of domestic policies aimed at eliminating poverty and racial injustice at the federal level. These policies were implemented by LBJ, who inherited his Presidency after the assassination of JFK. It appears that Abraxas believes that this so called 'War on Poverty' was a grand success, well it wasn't. Thomas Sowell notes that the Black Family began disintegrating at this time, and prior to the Great Society were doing comparatively well for themselves. Jonah Goldberg reinforces the same point I was arguing earlier, that welfare state policies, especially when implemented at a federal level, spawns an unhealthy and socially inept 'entitlement mentality.' If Jonah Goldberg is to partisan for Abraxas, than he should try Losing Ground by Charles Murray.
I will, however, note, that among African Americans, poverty rates dropped from 55.1% in 1959 to 32.2% in 1969. You can try and point to nebulous things like the "black family disintegrating", but the fact is the statistics say real, tangible advances were made.
http://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-179.pdf
Because it was working until we stopped implementing anti-poverty measures in a serious fashion under Nixon and the market was deregulated under Reagan. Countries that took it seriously dropped their poverty rates far lower than those of the US.Case 2: The Fair Deal
The Fair Deal refers to a set of welfare policies under President Truman. What this deal basically did was enhance and improve already existing welfare policies started by FDR. So, my question to Abraxas is with the implementation of the New Deal, then the Fair Deal, and then the Great Society why is the left today, blaming the free market for the afflictions of poverty that they believe are so great? Essentially, Abraxas agenda has been implemented time and time again yet the problem trying to be fixed has not been. Has he reached the conclusion that welfare in the United States, even though it has been tried and tried over and over again, is not a practical policy?
Has the private sector effectively regulated the border? No? Was the government manufacturing the vaccine or was it produced by the private sector resulting in shortages? Then in what sense has the market demonstrated more efficacy than the government in healthcare?Case 3: 2009 'Swine Flu Virus' Pandemic
While the eradication of Small Pox can be considered a success of cooperative national governments, the Swine Flu Virus Pandemic can been seen as the fault of the government. The problem was caused by the Federal Government because won't secure its own borders. The swine flu originated in Mexico and was brought to the United States because of unrestricted immigration, thus the failure of the federal government to secure and manage the borders caused this. Not only the, but the production and distribution of vaccines was equally deplorable. There were many instances of vaccine shortages in clinics and hospitals, and the timeline for a vaccine development was inconclusive.
This case is a red herring.
Not at all, all it indicates is that the Laffer Curve (if one accepts it) dictates there is an upper limit on government revenue and one would expect total government expenses to fall below it. Depending on the cost of your total government expenditures, welfare and healthcare included, this may or may not be an issue. You are building in the supposition that these programs would be on the wrong side of the tax line for cost while not providing any basis for doing so. Many countries with successful economies manage to pay for all of it, we can too.Case 4: The Laffer Curve
This is more of a theoretical argument. A primary component of Welfare is redistribution, and it is the redistribution of income from the wealthy to the poor by means of taxation. What we constantly hear from the left is that taxes need to be raised on the rich at a high rate, perhaps even at a rate of %100. Well, the Laffer Curve begins with the premise that at a %0 tax rate, the government will yield no revenue (obviously) and since the government yields no revenue welfare cannot exist. Well, the model goes onto predict that a tax rate of or near %100 will also cause the government to yield no revenue:
Thus, there exists an optimal point of taxation that should be moderate-low that would allow government to generate revenue and at the same time, for taxes to be levied. However, the problem is that as the Welfare State is expanded, government needs to put more funds into it and therefore generate more funds and therefore raise taxes putting the curve closer and closer to that %100 mark, which would render the entire upper class (whose income is being redistributed) useless.
I note once again you provided very little in the way of evidence, or, for that matter, even argumentation for the power of the free market to alleviate poverty or provide affordable healthcare for the American people, you also completely neglected to provide any kind of rationale for why the US is behind in quality of care nor why the European model wouldn't work here. Evidence and support are everything here and I hope next time out I will see a bit more of it.
-
WinePusher
Post #16
Comparatively, labor conditions in the United States were far better off than the conditions that existed in many other countries at that time. Another factor that characterized the industrialization of America was immigration, and the magnet that attracted so many immigrants was labor. Immigrants came because working conditions were better than the conditions that existed in their own country. In a free labor market, child labor is not a problem. If a child wants to work, the government has no right to prohibit that choice. Unfortunately for the child, there is no demand among employers for child labor because child labor is not valuable. Children have very little skills and can perform limited tasks, and in light of this children would not be hired. Child labor laws are some of the most useless laws that have ever been implemented. And people like you are constantly saying that wages are stagnate and are to low. Can you actually define a wage that would be appropriate? Again Abraxas, in a free labor market wages are determined by an easy concept: supply and demand, the supply and demand for workers who are allocated to different firms through wages. If a firm has a demand for a particular skill, and the supply of workers who possess that skill is plentiful than the wage is necessarily low. Anybody off the street in 19th century America could work in a factory, meaning that the supply of factory workers was high which forced wages to be low. Wage controls merely distort the market mechanism and create unconventional problems. This is what ultimately confuses me, it's as if you believe the government knows everything. The government just knows the right wage that workers should be paid, the government just knows how many Americans ought to own homes. Matters like these are governed by market mechanisms.Abraxas wrote:Firstly, on labor, we need not look much beyond the history of the United States to see why regulation of the practices surrounding the treatment of workers. Both the first and second industrial booms of the United States were characterized by brutal working conditions, resulting in countless deaths of those sacrificed to the twin gods of cost cutting and profit boosting.(1) Child labor was rampant.(2) Pay was incredibly low,(1) even frequently relying on a trucking system in which the only compensation they received was the capacity to purchase more goods from their employer, often on a line of credit at prices that far exceeded their pay, ensuring they could never escape debt and debtor's prison should they try to work elsewhere.(3)(4)
Part of your problem is that your line of argumentation is messed up. I see what you're trying to do, show how working conditions were in the 19th century (a period where government intervention was minimal) were horrid and how working conditions in the 20th and 21st century are fantastic and attribute the change to government intervention and unionization. 19th century America was when the industrial core of America was being established and as time progressed industries evolved and adopted newer, preferable policies. Work days are not uniform across all firms, not every worker has the same hours as another worker. In a free market, workers negotiate their hours with their employer. More hours means more money Abraxas, perhaps some workers prefered working long egregious hours because it meant they'd earn more in their paycheck. You don't know, I don't know, only they know and they express their desires through negotiation. The government may think it's preferable to impose 40 hour work weeks, but this merely inhibits the freedom of workers during negotiation.Abraxas wrote:Work days were extremely long, grossly curtailing the possibility of pursuing other interests.(5) Sick days and vacation time were essentially non-existent.(6) If you got crippled from a workplace accident, well, you just should have been more careful; you certainly wouldn't be compensated for it.(7) You were expected to be grateful you had any job at all with which to feed yourself and the fact you existed in a state of virtual slavery was immaterial.
I don't know what this means. How was a race to the bottom initiated in the labor market by government intervention? Race to the bottom refers to a reduction of government intervention. Are you saying that because different industries had to compete with one another for labor they dismantled their regulatory policies??? What do you mean? But I'll address the issue of profits since there's so much confusion surrounding this issue. Profits aren't maximized by businesses through screwing their workers and placing them in hostile working environments. Profits are maximized by producing goods and products in demand. Profits are signs that indicate a positive feedback situation. A producer produces product X which is consumed by a consumer which allows the producer to continue producing more of product X. You're only fooling yourself if you believe that cutting minute expenses, like safety equipment or benefits, are on an entreprenuers 'top ten ways to generate profits' list. The entire concept of benefits and pensions were introducted as a way to attract workers to particular firms and industries. They were a market invention.Abraxas wrote:(8) Indeed, the entire concept of the American middle class owes its existence to government intervening in the labor market to ensure the employer initiated race to the bottom that invariably follows from their interests to maximize profits and minimize expenses has a floor below which they cannot legally venture.(9)(10)
I really don't think you know what you're talking about here. Real wages refers to the final wage earned after inflation has been incorporated. It's the same as Real GDP, where inflation has already been incorporated, as opposed to Nominal GDP, where inflation hasn't been incorporated. Real wages did decline under Reagan, but not because of the reason you've provided. If you know your history, you'd realize that inflation was rampant throughout the decades preceding Reagan and even into the early years of his presidency. Around that same exact time real wages began to decline. That's because inflation reduces real wages. It's the reason why inflation is a problem in the first place. If prices rise and real wages rise at the same time there would be no problem, but what happens is prices rise, nominal wages generally rise, and real wages almost always fall. So, the stagnation in real wages before and during the Reagan administration is traced back to inflation, not the 'weaking of union protections under federal law.'Abraxas wrote:More recently, following WWII, when regulation of industry was the strongest in our history, we made enormous gains not only in our gross output, but also in the participation of the average American in that wealth. Real wages grew steadily, keeping pace with GDP and raising the standard of living.(12) However, when regulations were weakened during the Reagan "Revolution", what we saw is the GDP continue to grow and productivity continue to skyrocket to ever higher heights, however, for the first time in decades workers were not sharing in it. Real wages stagnated as runaway profit lust took over and the increasing levels of income were redirected to the shareholders instead of the employees.(12)(13) This can be directly traced to the weakening of union protections under federal law.
A government imposed ceiling that lowers the number of hours and days an individual can work does nothing beneficial. All it does is hinder the freedom of the individual during negotiation. The number of hours and days a person is willing to work is determined by a market mechanism known as a labor/leisure trade off. An individual either has a choice to spend his time devoted to labor or devoted to leisure. If the wage being offered increases, the individual will choose to spend more of his time devoted to labor since the high wage acts as an incentive and if the wage being offered decreases the individual will choose to devote more of his time to labor since the low wage requires him to put in more hours as compensation. Either way, people choose to spend more of their time on work rather than on leisure, so for you to suggest that leisure is somehow more preferable and desirable is wrong.Abraxas wrote:What we see now in the market and the state of the American worker, as a direct result of deregulation, is a situation where the US for the first time stands a very real chance of leaving the generations that follow in a worse off position than the generation that came before them. The regulation of companies does not inherently hinder economic growth, indeed as was observed by Henry Ford, things like lowering the number of hours worked per day creates a demand in the market as leisure time expands which helps drive the fires of industry.(14)
Go ahead and show how the goal of profit maximization destroys the conditions in which people work, the wages people recieve, and the benefits and pensions people recieve. You think profits are the root of all societies problems and you have a biased and skewed understanding of what profits actually are. But aside from that, you have not really specified anything you'd like the government to do. What intiatives and policies would exist under this governmental framework?Abraxas wrote:More than that, who directly interacts with you regularly, has a greater power discrepancy than that of your employer? Your employer has a tremendous influence on whether you can afford to eat, afford to have housing, afford leisure activities, be permitted leisure time, afford medical care for you or your family, etc. They have strong influence on when you can get up every day, when you go to bed, who you spend your day with, and under what conditions you will spend that day. Who can honestly say they think society would be better off if this sphere that makes up such an enormous portion of the lives of hundreds of millions would be better off left to the whims of individual employers whose primary concern is necessarily the overall maximization of profit for the company as a whole rather than the well being of their employees? Instead, does it not make more sense to have the people, the democratically selected government, set the framework under which these interactions will take place?
It's very practical and done all the time. The frequency at which individuals are changing jobs and employers has been increasing over time, this is common knowledge. It's likely for one individual to change jobs at least four times over a ten year time span.Abraxas wrote:I can hear two objections already, so I will address them now. Sure, an employee can leave employment to work either for another company or for themselves, but how practical is this?
??? Start up companies don't employ everybody in the labor market. And as one company dies another company comes into existence to take it's place, it's a cyclical system.Abraxas wrote:The majority of start up companies don't live much past five years(16), leaving the individual in generally worse position financially than they were before they started.(17)
Well that's because we're in a recession Abraxas. That should be old news by now. Of course every job opening today has many applicants applying for it, that's because today we have a high unemployment rate. The higher the unemployment rate, the more people will be searching and applying for jobs. Again, it's simple supply and demand. There's a high supply of workers and a low demand for workers. At pre recession rates, what we generally see is equilibrium between the supply and demand for labor.Abraxas wrote:Further, every job opening today has roughly four Americans applying for it (not counting the "underemployed")(18). With those kinds of odds against finding other employment, how does one reasonably expect a person to abandon their posting when faced with the urgency of everyday life, such as acquiring the next meal, ensuring your medicine will be available, and keeping power to your heater going in the dead of winter?
This is a poor argument Abraxas. You happily attribute any advancement in civil rights to the federal government, but ignore the hinderences in civil rights that the federal government was responsible for. Many of the cases you cite are merely instances of the Court correcting or reversing the abborent decisions it made before. Brown v. Board of Education was merely a reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson. Had there been no Plessy v. Ferguson there would have been no need for Brown v. Board of Education. Had the Supreme Court not set the precedent of de jure segregation in Plessy there would not have been a need for half of the cases you cited. Using your logic, there would have been no Civil War had there been no Dred Scott v. Sandford. This is a classic example of starting the story in the middle. If you had began the story at the beginning, you'd realize that it was the government that was the primary entity responsible for segregation and racism and slavery and that these cases you cite are merely corrections of prior actions. It's like saying that a mother deserves an award for caring and attending to her mentally retarded child, when in fact the only reason why the child is retarded is that the mother drank and did drugs during her pregnancy.Abraxas wrote:This brings me to the second segment, how government intervention is necessary to protect minority rights when it comes to discrimination and civil rights. This, I think, should be fairly self evident. A large section of the country once attempted to break away and fought a civil war for the express purpose of denying civil rights on the basis of skin color. I ask that you not say it was for state's rights; if you look at the list of grievances presented for their succession, the one consistent theme among those states who listed such is slavery.(20) Further, look at many of the civil rights breakthroughs in American history, they came down as a court ruling from the US Supreme Court, (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, Boynton v. Virginia, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, Gates v. Collier, and countless more represent the fundamental necessity of federal court involvement)(21)(22), as legislation from the federal level (Civil Rights act of 1957, Equal Pay Act of 1963, Civil Rights act of 1960, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Civil Rights act of 1968)(23)(24), or an amendment ratified by some states over the express objection of others (13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, and 24th Amendments to the US Constitution)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29).
The 'federal justice system' has been responsible for more than half these problems. In a free society, where government intervention is for the most part non-existent, how would Jim Crow laws be enforced? How would segregated schools and bathrooms and restaurants be enforced? Segregation wasn't enforced by the market Abraxas, it was enforced by the government. Every single black individual who was denied access from entering a restaurant reserved for whites cost that restaurant owner his or her business. In a free market, segregation would have never manifested itself in society because it would not be profitable for a business owner to deny service to an individual on this basis of his or her race. It is not feasiable in a free market to open up a restaurant and only allow whites in, as it wasn't feasible to only allow whites to ride buses in the south. When blacks began to boycott public transportation, public transportation businesses began to incur huge losses and were eventually forced to accept their demands.Abraxas wrote:I'm not merely speaking of the civil rights of African Americans, but on things like women's suffrage and the rights of people of certain national heritage, disability, or homosexual rights as well. Time and time again we see the fastest and most effective way to put an end to things like segregation, denial of voting rights, ensuring fair opportunity to work and learn, and even bringing to justice those who would harm minorities has been the federal justice system.
This is an absurd argument. The market does not encourage any type of behavior. The market allows individuals to engage in whatever type of behavior they want as long as it doesn't harm or impede the freedom of other individuals. The reason you don't see very many working class people at yacht clubs is because most working class people can't afford memberships to yacht clubs, only individuals with disposable income can.Abraxas wrote:If the free market can be relied upon to defeat it, why does it still remain with us?
The reason is simple, the free market does not necessarily encourage tolerance. While broadening customer base is often preferable, some businesses work on a model of exclusivity where the patrons don't have to deal with certain other people. You don't see a lot of working class people at the yacht club, and the very wealthy will pay a lot of money to keep it that way. Likewise, if you have a customer base that is racist, they may well choose to shop at establishments that are likewise racist over more liberal ones. In locations with a lot of racism, or few minorities or supporters of minority rights, there may well be no market incentive to change the objectionable behavior. Historically, this has extended not merely to cities, but to entire states. I again cite the case of the Little Rock 9(30) in which essentially the state of Arkansas itself a little over 50 years ago acted as an agent to enforce illegal and unethical racial segregation with popular support among the locals. Under those conditions, how does leaving it to the states or the private citizenry even begin to solve the problem? The answer is it can't. Very little economic pressure, very little internal social pressure, can be brought when most of the populace supports the repressive measures. For this reason, the federal government is a virtual necessity for fast acting, effective social change of this nature.
Because segregation was enforced by the government. The concept isn't very hard to comprehend Abraxas, so I don't know why you're having such a hard time here. Civil rights injustices were the fault of the government. Segregation and institutional racism ended when the existing laws were changed.Abraxas wrote:Finally, along these lines, I would have to ask if nonintervention by the federal government, the trademark of the libertarian ideal of policy setting from the federal level could be counted on to reliably work better as a means to end the civil rights injustices that plagued our society up through the middle of this past century, why didn't they?
Reverse discrimination is the synonym for Affirmative Action. I didn't plan on debating Affirmative Action here but if you want to then I'd be happy to debate it. All you have done is dismiss any criticism of reverse racism as nonsense without providing any logical or intellectual argument. Racism, as it's defined, is merely discrimination based upon an individuals race. If an employer hires a white individual over a black individual solely because he's white, liberals like you would begin to indignantly scream racism at the top of your lungs. If an employer hires a black individual over a white individual solely because he's black, liberals like you start applauding and praising the decision. In your mind, the former is racism and the latter is 'affirmative action.' In my mind both instances are examples of racism. Do you see the inconsistency in your position yet?Abraxas wrote:Every once in a while you'll see an argument regarding "reverse racism", but that is patent nonsense as well, even at the most egregious only applying to a handful of poorly worded or poorly implemented civil rights measures and I sincerely hope this is not the counterargument you intended to make.
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WinePusher
Post #17
Comparatively, labor conditions in the United States were far better off than the conditions that existed in many other countries at that time. Another factor that characterized the industrialization of America was immigration, and the magnet that attracted so many immigrants was labor. Immigrants came because working conditions were better than the conditions that existed in their own country. In a free labor market, child labor is not a problem. If a child wants to work, the government has no right to prohibit that choice. Unfortunately for the child, there is no demand among employers for child labor because child labor is not valuable. Children have very little skills and can perform limited tasks, and in light of this children would not be hired. Child labor laws are some of the most useless laws that have ever been implemented. And people like you are constantly saying that wages are stagnate and are to low. Can you actually define a wage that would be appropriate? Again Abraxas, in a free labor market wages are determined by an easy concept: supply and demand, the supply and demand for workers who are allocated to different firms through wages. If a firm has a demand for a particular skill, and the supply of workers who possess that skill is plentiful than the wage is necessarily low. Anybody off the street in 19th century America could work in a factory, meaning that the supply of factory workers was high which forced wages to be low. Wage controls merely distort the market mechanism and create unconventional problems. This is what ultimately confuses me, it's as if you believe the government knows everything. The government just knows the right wage that workers should be paid, the government just knows how many Americans ought to own homes. Matters like these are governed by market mechanisms.Abraxas wrote:Firstly, on labor, we need not look much beyond the history of the United States to see why regulation of the practices surrounding the treatment of workers. Both the first and second industrial booms of the United States were characterized by brutal working conditions, resulting in countless deaths of those sacrificed to the twin gods of cost cutting and profit boosting.(1) Child labor was rampant.(2) Pay was incredibly low,(1) even frequently relying on a trucking system in which the only compensation they received was the capacity to purchase more goods from their employer, often on a line of credit at prices that far exceeded their pay, ensuring they could never escape debt and debtor's prison should they try to work elsewhere.(3)(4)
Part of your problem is that your line of argumentation is messed up. I see what you're trying to do, show how working conditions were in the 19th century (a period where government intervention was minimal) were horrid and how working conditions in the 20th and 21st century are fantastic and attribute the change to government intervention and unionization. 19th century America was when the industrial core of America was being established and as time progressed industries evolved and adopted newer, preferable policies. Work days are not uniform across all firms, not every worker has the same hours as another worker. In a free market, workers negotiate their hours with their employer. More hours means more money Abraxas, perhaps some workers prefered working long egregious hours because it meant they'd earn more in their paycheck. You don't know, I don't know, only they know and they express their desires through negotiation. The government may think it's preferable to impose 40 hour work weeks, but this merely inhibits the freedom of workers during negotiation.Abraxas wrote:Work days were extremely long, grossly curtailing the possibility of pursuing other interests.(5) Sick days and vacation time were essentially non-existent.(6) If you got crippled from a workplace accident, well, you just should have been more careful; you certainly wouldn't be compensated for it.(7) You were expected to be grateful you had any job at all with which to feed yourself and the fact you existed in a state of virtual slavery was immaterial.
I don't know what this means. How was a race to the bottom initiated in the labor market by government intervention? Race to the bottom refers to a reduction of government intervention. Are you saying that because different industries had to compete with one another for labor they dismantled their regulatory policies??? What do you mean? But I'll address the issue of profits since there's so much confusion surrounding this issue. Profits aren't maximized by businesses through screwing their workers and placing them in hostile working environments. Profits are maximized by producing goods and products in demand. Profits are signs that indicate a positive feedback situation. A producer produces product X which is consumed by a consumer which allows the producer to continue producing more of product X. You're only fooling yourself if you believe that cutting minute expenses, like safety equipment or benefits, are on an entreprenuers 'top ten ways to generate profits' list. The entire concept of benefits and pensions were introducted as a way to attract workers to particular firms and industries. They were a market invention.Abraxas wrote:(8) Indeed, the entire concept of the American middle class owes its existence to government intervening in the labor market to ensure the employer initiated race to the bottom that invariably follows from their interests to maximize profits and minimize expenses has a floor below which they cannot legally venture.(9)(10)
I really don't think you know what you're talking about here. Real wages refers to the final wage earned after inflation has been incorporated. It's the same as Real GDP, where inflation has already been incorporated, as opposed to Nominal GDP, where inflation hasn't been incorporated. Real wages did decline under Reagan, but not because of the reason you've provided. If you know your history, you'd realize that inflation was rampant throughout the decades preceding Reagan and even into the early years of his presidency. Around that same exact time real wages began to decline. That's because inflation reduces real wages. It's the reason why inflation is a problem in the first place. If prices rise and real wages rise at the same time there would be no problem, but what happens is prices rise, nominal wages generally rise, and real wages almost always fall. So, the stagnation in real wages before and during the Reagan administration is traced back to inflation, not the 'weaking of union protections under federal law.'Abraxas wrote:More recently, following WWII, when regulation of industry was the strongest in our history, we made enormous gains not only in our gross output, but also in the participation of the average American in that wealth. Real wages grew steadily, keeping pace with GDP and raising the standard of living.(12) However, when regulations were weakened during the Reagan "Revolution", what we saw is the GDP continue to grow and productivity continue to skyrocket to ever higher heights, however, for the first time in decades workers were not sharing in it. Real wages stagnated as runaway profit lust took over and the increasing levels of income were redirected to the shareholders instead of the employees.(12)(13) This can be directly traced to the weakening of union protections under federal law.
A government imposed ceiling that lowers the number of hours and days an individual can work does nothing beneficial. All it does is hinder the freedom of the individual during negotiation. The number of hours and days a person is willing to work is determined by a market mechanism known as a labor/leisure trade off. An individual either has a choice to spend his time devoted to labor or devoted to leisure. If the wage being offered increases, the individual will choose to spend more of his time devoted to labor since the high wage acts as an incentive and if the wage being offered decreases the individual will choose to devote more of his time to labor since the low wage requires him to put in more hours as compensation. Either way, people choose to spend more of their time on work rather than on leisure, so for you to suggest that leisure is somehow more preferable and desirable is wrong.Abraxas wrote:What we see now in the market and the state of the American worker, as a direct result of deregulation, is a situation where the US for the first time stands a very real chance of leaving the generations that follow in a worse off position than the generation that came before them. The regulation of companies does not inherently hinder economic growth, indeed as was observed by Henry Ford, things like lowering the number of hours worked per day creates a demand in the market as leisure time expands which helps drive the fires of industry.(14)
Go ahead and show how the goal of profit maximization destroys the conditions in which people work, the wages people recieve, and the benefits and pensions people recieve. You think profits are the root of all societies problems and you have a biased and skewed understanding of what profits actually are. But aside from that, you have not really specified anything you'd like the government to do. What intiatives and policies would exist under this governmental framework?Abraxas wrote:More than that, who directly interacts with you regularly, has a greater power discrepancy than that of your employer? Your employer has a tremendous influence on whether you can afford to eat, afford to have housing, afford leisure activities, be permitted leisure time, afford medical care for you or your family, etc. They have strong influence on when you can get up every day, when you go to bed, who you spend your day with, and under what conditions you will spend that day. Who can honestly say they think society would be better off if this sphere that makes up such an enormous portion of the lives of hundreds of millions would be better off left to the whims of individual employers whose primary concern is necessarily the overall maximization of profit for the company as a whole rather than the well being of their employees? Instead, does it not make more sense to have the people, the democratically selected government, set the framework under which these interactions will take place?
It's very practical and done all the time. The frequency at which individuals are changing jobs and employers has been increasing over time, this is common knowledge. It's likely for one individual to change jobs at least four times over a ten year time span.Abraxas wrote:I can hear two objections already, so I will address them now. Sure, an employee can leave employment to work either for another company or for themselves, but how practical is this?
??? Start up companies don't employ everybody in the labor market. And as one company dies another company comes into existence to take it's place, it's a cyclical system.Abraxas wrote:The majority of start up companies don't live much past five years(16), leaving the individual in generally worse position financially than they were before they started.(17)
Well that's because we're in a recession Abraxas. That should be old news by now. Of course every job opening today has many applicants applying for it, that's because today we have a high unemployment rate. The higher the unemployment rate, the more people will be searching and applying for jobs. Again, it's simple supply and demand. There's a high supply of workers and a low demand for workers. At pre recession rates, what we generally see is equilibrium between the supply and demand for labor.Abraxas wrote:Further, every job opening today has roughly four Americans applying for it (not counting the "underemployed")(18). With those kinds of odds against finding other employment, how does one reasonably expect a person to abandon their posting when faced with the urgency of everyday life, such as acquiring the next meal, ensuring your medicine will be available, and keeping power to your heater going in the dead of winter?
This is a poor argument Abraxas. You happily attribute any advancement in civil rights to the federal government, but ignore the hinderences in civil rights that the federal government was responsible for. Many of the cases you cite are merely instances of the Court correcting or reversing the abborent decisions it made before. Brown v. Board of Education was merely a reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson. Had there been no Plessy v. Ferguson there would have been no need for Brown v. Board of Education. Had the Supreme Court not set the precedent of de jure segregation in Plessy there would not have been a need for half of the cases you cited. Using your logic, there would have been no Civil War had there been no Dred Scott v. Sandford. This is a classic example of starting the story in the middle. If you had began the story at the beginning, you'd realize that it was the government that was the primary entity responsible for segregation and racism and slavery and that these cases you cite are merely corrections of prior actions. It's like saying that a mother deserves an award for caring and attending to her mentally retarded child, when in fact the only reason why the child is retarded is that the mother drank and did drugs during her pregnancy.Abraxas wrote:This brings me to the second segment, how government intervention is necessary to protect minority rights when it comes to discrimination and civil rights. This, I think, should be fairly self evident. A large section of the country once attempted to break away and fought a civil war for the express purpose of denying civil rights on the basis of skin color. I ask that you not say it was for state's rights; if you look at the list of grievances presented for their succession, the one consistent theme among those states who listed such is slavery.(20) Further, look at many of the civil rights breakthroughs in American history, they came down as a court ruling from the US Supreme Court, (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, Boynton v. Virginia, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, Gates v. Collier, and countless more represent the fundamental necessity of federal court involvement)(21)(22), as legislation from the federal level (Civil Rights act of 1957, Equal Pay Act of 1963, Civil Rights act of 1960, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Civil Rights act of 1968)(23)(24), or an amendment ratified by some states over the express objection of others (13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, and 24th Amendments to the US Constitution)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29).
The 'federal justice system' has been responsible for more than half these problems. In a free society, where government intervention is for the most part non-existent, how would Jim Crow laws be enforced? How would segregated schools and bathrooms and restaurants be enforced? Segregation wasn't enforced by the market Abraxas, it was enforced by the government. Every single black individual who was denied access from entering a restaurant reserved for whites cost that restaurant owner his or her business. In a free market, segregation would have never manifested itself in society because it would not be profitable for a business owner to deny service to an individual on this basis of his or her race. It is not feasiable in a free market to open up a restaurant and only allow whites in, as it wasn't feasible to only allow whites to ride buses in the south. When blacks began to boycott public transportation, public transportation businesses began to incur huge losses and were eventually forced to accept their demands.Abraxas wrote:I'm not merely speaking of the civil rights of African Americans, but on things like women's suffrage and the rights of people of certain national heritage, disability, or homosexual rights as well. Time and time again we see the fastest and most effective way to put an end to things like segregation, denial of voting rights, ensuring fair opportunity to work and learn, and even bringing to justice those who would harm minorities has been the federal justice system.
This is an absurd argument. The market does not encourage any type of behavior. The market allows individuals to engage in whatever type of behavior they want as long as it doesn't harm or impede the freedom of other individuals. The reason you don't see very many working class people at yacht clubs is because most working class people can't afford memberships to yacht clubs, only individuals with disposable income can.Abraxas wrote:If the free market can be relied upon to defeat it, why does it still remain with us?
The reason is simple, the free market does not necessarily encourage tolerance. While broadening customer base is often preferable, some businesses work on a model of exclusivity where the patrons don't have to deal with certain other people. You don't see a lot of working class people at the yacht club, and the very wealthy will pay a lot of money to keep it that way. Likewise, if you have a customer base that is racist, they may well choose to shop at establishments that are likewise racist over more liberal ones. In locations with a lot of racism, or few minorities or supporters of minority rights, there may well be no market incentive to change the objectionable behavior. Historically, this has extended not merely to cities, but to entire states. I again cite the case of the Little Rock 9(30) in which essentially the state of Arkansas itself a little over 50 years ago acted as an agent to enforce illegal and unethical racial segregation with popular support among the locals. Under those conditions, how does leaving it to the states or the private citizenry even begin to solve the problem? The answer is it can't. Very little economic pressure, very little internal social pressure, can be brought when most of the populace supports the repressive measures. For this reason, the federal government is a virtual necessity for fast acting, effective social change of this nature.
Because segregation was enforced by the government. The concept isn't very hard to comprehend Abraxas, so I don't know why you're having such a hard time here. Civil rights injustices were the fault of the government. Segregation and institutional racism ended when the existing laws were changed.Abraxas wrote:Finally, along these lines, I would have to ask if nonintervention by the federal government, the trademark of the libertarian ideal of policy setting from the federal level could be counted on to reliably work better as a means to end the civil rights injustices that plagued our society up through the middle of this past century, why didn't they?
Reverse discrimination is the synonym for Affirmative Action. I didn't plan on debating Affirmative Action here but if you want to then I'd be happy to debate it. All you have done is dismiss any criticism of reverse racism as nonsense without providing any logical or intellectual argument. Racism, as it's defined, is merely discrimination based upon an individuals race. If an employer hires a white individual over a black individual solely because he's white, liberals like you would begin to indignantly scream racism at the top of your lungs. If an employer hires a black individual over a white individual solely because he's black, liberals like you start applauding and praising the decision. In your mind, the former is racism and the latter is 'affirmative action.' In my mind both instances are examples of racism. Do you see the inconsistency in your position yet?Abraxas wrote:Every once in a while you'll see an argument regarding "reverse racism", but that is patent nonsense as well, even at the most egregious only applying to a handful of poorly worded or poorly implemented civil rights measures and I sincerely hope this is not the counterargument you intended to make.
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WinePusher
Post #18
Abraxas and I have agreed to a revised format for this debate to allow for more posting and rebuttals.
The current format:
Post 1: Abraxas presents an argument for why government intervention is needed
Post 2: WinePusher presents rebuttal
Post 3: WinePusher presents an argument for why a Free Market Approach is more fundamentally sound
Post 4: Abraxas presents rebuttal
will be changed to this format:
Post 1: Abraxas initial argument
Post 2: WinePusher rebuttal
Post 3: Abraxas Rebuttal
Post 4: WinePusher final rebuttal
Post 5: WinePusher initial argument
Post 6: Abraxas rebuttal
Post 7: WinePusher rebuttal
Post 8: Abraxas final rebuttal
for the remainder of the debate. So the next post in this thread will be post 3, a rebuttal by Abraxas.
The current format:
Post 1: Abraxas presents an argument for why government intervention is needed
Post 2: WinePusher presents rebuttal
Post 3: WinePusher presents an argument for why a Free Market Approach is more fundamentally sound
Post 4: Abraxas presents rebuttal
will be changed to this format:
Post 1: Abraxas initial argument
Post 2: WinePusher rebuttal
Post 3: Abraxas Rebuttal
Post 4: WinePusher final rebuttal
Post 5: WinePusher initial argument
Post 6: Abraxas rebuttal
Post 7: WinePusher rebuttal
Post 8: Abraxas final rebuttal
for the remainder of the debate. So the next post in this thread will be post 3, a rebuttal by Abraxas.
Post #19
Thank you WP, I appreciate you posting this. It would have felt in appropriate, as the first person to post under the new format, for me to make the announced change in rules or to make another post without announcing it.WinePusher wrote:Abraxas and I have agreed to a revised format for this debate to allow for more posting and rebuttals.
...
for the remainder of the debate. So the next post in this thread will be post 3, a rebuttal by Abraxas.
I don't see how any of this changes my argument. I think our bar can be a bit nigher than not the worst in the world.Comparatively, labor conditions in the United States were far better off than the conditions that existed in many other countries at that time. Another factor that characterized the industrialization of America was immigration, and the magnet that attracted so many immigrants was labor. Immigrants came because working conditions were better than the conditions that existed in their own country.
How do you figure? Do you think low skill jobs have gone away? Crops pick themselves, floors wash themselves, boxes move themselves, and shelves stock themselves now? The reason child labor laws were implemented is because businesses were hiring children, which kind of makes it likely they might do so again if doing so drives down the price of labor. More competition for jobs means jobs can pay lower wages, and so businesses that create openings that can exploit this larger labor pool will do better than those that don't.In a free labor market, child labor is not a problem. If a child wants to work, the government has no right to prohibit that choice. Unfortunately for the child, there is no demand among employers for child labor because child labor is not valuable. Children have very little skills and can perform limited tasks, and in light of this children would not be hired. Child labor laws are some of the most useless laws that have ever been implemented.
Forced them to be low? Yeah, I'll bet the industrialists in the day suffered much arm twisting and lamentation before they were cruelly forced to make more money by cutting the wages of their workers. No, the industrialists took advantage of a large labor force that allowed them to cut wages, in some cases to levels that amounted to virtual slavery, such as Ludlow. Can I define what wages are appropriate? Probably not. Can economists find an appropriate minimum wage? Yes, they have before, they can again. But more to the point, not all government controls require direct caps. Things like guaranteeing union protections can help give workers the tools they need to help keep their own wages fair.Can you actually define a wage that would be appropriate? Again Abraxas, in a free labor market wages are determined by an easy concept: supply and demand, the supply and demand for workers who are allocated to different firms through wages. If a firm has a demand for a particular skill, and the supply of workers who possess that skill is plentiful than the wage is necessarily low. Anybody off the street in 19th century America could work in a factory, meaning that the supply of factory workers was high which forced wages to be low. Wage controls merely distort the market mechanism and create unconventional problems. This is what ultimately confuses me, it's as if you believe the government knows everything. The government just knows the right wage that workers should be paid, the government just knows how many Americans ought to own homes. Matters like these are governed by market mechanisms.
I also don't accept the idea distortion is inherently bad. A natural, undistorted market is an ugly, bloody, brutal thing and I see nothing wrong with distorting that aspect of it.
Yes, they did. However, you fail to mention why. The reason why in large part is that workers were able to organize and were able to do so in large part because of government protections. This forced industry to evolve.Part of your problem is that your line of argumentation is messed up. I see what you're trying to do, show how working conditions were in the 19th century (a period where government intervention was minimal) were horrid and how working conditions in the 20th and 21st century are fantastic and attribute the change to government intervention and unionization. 19th century America was when the industrial core of America was being established and as time progressed industries evolved and adopted newer, preferable policies.
Excuse me, on what basis do you assert more hours means more in their paycheck? Very often this wasn't the case and workers had to engage in unpaid labor or get fired. But hey, that's the free market, right? Work longer hours for nothing or get the axe and lose the ability to feed your family, choose freely. I do know, Winepusher, because I know what rights workers pushed for when they did unionize and among those rights were standardized hours and pay for overtime. If workers did not want these things they would not have unionized to demand these things. Who do you think pushed the 40 hour work week to begin with if not labor unions, aka laborers?Work days are not uniform across all firms, not every worker has the same hours as another worker. In a free market, workers negotiate their hours with their employer. More hours means more money Abraxas, perhaps some workers prefered working long egregious hours because it meant they'd earn more in their paycheck. You don't know, I don't know, only they know and they express their desires through negotiation. The government may think it's preferable to impose 40 hour work weeks, but this merely inhibits the freedom of workers during negotiation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
I think you misread what I said. Once again:I don't know what this means. How was a race to the bottom initiated in the labor market by government intervention? Race to the bottom refers to a reduction of government intervention. Are you saying that because different industries had to compete with one another for labor they dismantled their regulatory policies??? What do you mean?
Indeed, the entire concept of the American middle class owes its existence to government intervening in the labor market to ensure the employer initiated race to the bottom that invariably follows from their interests to maximize profits and minimize expenses has a floor below which they cannot legally venture.(9)(10)
Really? You don't think cutting expenses is one way companies boost profits and that one of the largest expenses is labor? Really? You don't think if product X can be produced more cheaply either by getting rid of workers and making the survivors work harder or by cutting their pay they don't make more profit? Really???But I'll address the issue of profits since there's so much confusion surrounding this issue. Profits aren't maximized by businesses through screwing their workers and placing them in hostile working environments. Profits are maximized by producing goods and products in demand. Profits are signs that indicate a positive feedback situation. A producer produces product X which is consumed by a consumer which allows the producer to continue producing more of product X. You're only fooling yourself if you believe that cutting minute expenses, like safety equipment or benefits, are on an entreprenuers 'top ten ways to generate profits' list.
Come on, WP, you know as well as I do that profit is revenue minus expense and that you can increase profit by both raising revenue and lowering expense and the business will always try to do both.
A market invention arising from protections afforded to the unions that negotiated for them by the government.The entire concept of benefits and pensions were introducted as a way to attract workers to particular firms and industries. They were a market invention.
Sorry, reality disagrees. If what you are saying were true, we should expect real wages to start increasing again once inflation was reversed by the mid eighties, and, behold, it slowed to a fraction of the rate before the inflation crisis. Inflation was not the cause of the stagnation in real wages, if it were you should see a consistent change across all tiers in reduction of real income, instead, you see the very wealthy go up and the poor fall flat. That is a result of the destruction of regulation of industry.I really don't think you know what you're talking about here. Real wages refers to the final wage earned after inflation has been incorporated. It's the same as Real GDP, where inflation has already been incorporated, as opposed to Nominal GDP, where inflation hasn't been incorporated. Real wages did decline under Reagan, but not because of the reason you've provided. If you know your history, you'd realize that inflation was rampant throughout the decades preceding Reagan and even into the early years of his presidency. Around that same exact time real wages began to decline. That's because inflation reduces real wages. It's the reason why inflation is a problem in the first place. If prices rise and real wages rise at the same time there would be no problem, but what happens is prices rise, nominal wages generally rise, and real wages almost always fall. So, the stagnation in real wages before and during the Reagan administration is traced back to inflation, not the 'weaking of union protections under federal law.'
Yes, because the 40 hour work week ended overtime, nobody works that anymore.A government imposed ceiling that lowers the number of hours and days an individual can work does nothing beneficial. All it does is hinder the freedom of the individual during negotiation. The number of hours and days a person is willing to work is determined by a market mechanism known as a labor/leisure trade off.
You completely missed the point. Henry Ford predicted that for an industrialized nation, production wasn't enough. If everyone spends all their time working, they do not have any need for luxury goods. A lack of need kills demand, a lack of demand kills sales, a lack of sales kills profits, a lack of profits kills jobs, etc. He decided because of this that leisure time was necessary to drive demand for luxury goods, and demand would drive prices and sales and industry as a whole.An individual either has a choice to spend his time devoted to labor or devoted to leisure. If the wage being offered increases, the individual will choose to spend more of his time devoted to labor since the high wage acts as an incentive and if the wage being offered decreases the individual will choose to devote more of his time to labor since the low wage requires him to put in more hours as compensation. Either way, people choose to spend more of their time on work rather than on leisure, so for you to suggest that leisure is somehow more preferable and desirable is wrong.
Wages are costs, cutting costs raises profits, raised profits is good for the employer, and so cutting wages as much as you can get away with is good for the employer.Go ahead and show how the goal of profit maximization destroys the conditions in which people work, the wages people recieve, and the benefits and pensions people recieve. You think profits are the root of all societies problems and you have a biased and skewed understanding of what profits actually are.
Much of it is or was being done, formalize protections for unions, legislate things like minimum safe work conditions, minimum wage laws, socialized medicine, etc. I feel many of these things should be expanded in certain ways. The current minimum wage is insufficient, inspections should be more complete and inspectors have more authority to cite companies for dangerous behavior; things of this nature. Companies will learn how to be more competitive in that environment or they will leave it and a niche will open up and new companies will come in. If they can't operate fairly and safely, maybe they shouldn't operate at all.But aside from that, you have not really specified anything you'd like the government to do. What intiatives and policies would exist under this governmental framework?
It is practical for a few people to do it under the right circumstances, yes. It is not practical for large sections of the labor force to do it simultaneously. For every one it works out for, how many end up in a worse job or no job at all and how many can afford to take that risk?It's very practical and done all the time. The frequency at which individuals are changing jobs and employers has been increasing over time, this is common knowledge. It's likely for one individual to change jobs at least four times over a ten year time span.
I never said they did and they don't always. Sometimes the void is left or one company fills the role of several dead ones, reducing the number of niches. I'm not sure what your point here is anyway.??? Start up companies don't employ everybody in the labor market. And as one company dies another company comes into existence to take it's place, it's a cyclical system.
No, never complete equilibrium. Even during the tech bubble in the 90s we had 1:1 as a ratio to of jobs to seekers (counting only unemployed figures, not underemployed), however, what that neglects is you still end up with competition in that environment for the low paying, low skill jobs with most openings being for high skill or highly specialized jobs which still renders the mass movement needed to create economic fairness by this method grossly impractical on a widespread individual scale.Well that's because we're in a recession Abraxas. That should be old news by now. Of course every job opening today has many applicants applying for it, that's because today we have a high unemployment rate. The higher the unemployment rate, the more people will be searching and applying for jobs. Again, it's simple supply and demand. There's a high supply of workers and a low demand for workers. At pre recession rates, what we generally see is equilibrium between the supply and demand for labor.
You are completely misrepresenting what happened there. Plessy v. Ferguson was a (bad) ruling that a state law in Louisiana did not violate constitution. It was not, as you are representing, a federal enforcement of segregation, but rather gave states the power to create their own laws, which states and local jurisdictions used to create their own segregation laws.This is a poor argument Abraxas. You happily attribute any advancement in civil rights to the federal government, but ignore the hinderences in civil rights that the federal government was responsible for. Many of the cases you cite are merely instances of the Court correcting or reversing the abborent decisions it made before. Brown v. Board of Education was merely a reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson. Had there been no Plessy v. Ferguson there would have been no need for Brown v. Board of Education. Had the Supreme Court not set the precedent of de jure segregation in Plessy there would not have been a need for half of the cases you cited. Using your logic, there would have been no Civil War had there been no Dred Scott v. Sandford. This is a classic example of starting the story in the middle. If you had began the story at the beginning, you'd realize that it was the government that was the primary entity responsible for segregation and racism and slavery and that these cases you cite are merely corrections of prior actions. It's like saying that a mother deserves an award for caring and attending to her mentally retarded child, when in fact the only reason why the child is retarded is that the mother drank and did drugs during her pregnancy.
Put another way, this was an instance of the federal government not making something which is reprehensible illegal, in other words, leaving it to your free society, and they took it and ran to make racism over and systematic. Had the government ruled initially it was in violation of federal law, it would have solved the problem then instead of waiting until Brown. This is a case of insufficient government intervention, certainly not too much as you are pretending.
You seem to be confusing state governments with the federal government in an effort to equivocate the two. The fact of the matter is, while there were instances of the federal government doing terrible things (and I did not ignore them, I spent considerable time talking about them), most of their efforts, especially after WWII were spent correcting those evils, whereas most of the new state laws concerning race during this period were promoting them.
State and local governments, and private citizens exercising the right to remove people from their property for any reason.The 'federal justice system' has been responsible for more than half these problems. In a free society, where government intervention is for the most part non-existent, how would Jim Crow laws be enforced?
State and local governments, and private citizens exercising the right to remove people from their property for any reason.How would segregated schools and bathrooms and restaurants be enforced?
Enforced by state and local governments, and private citizens exercising the right to remove people from their property for any reason.Segregation wasn't enforced by the market Abraxas, it was enforced by the government.
I don't believe you honestly think this is true. You know, as well as I do, the vast, vast majority of Jim Crow laws came from the state and local level, not federal.Every single black individual who was denied access from entering a restaurant reserved for whites cost that restaurant owner his or her business. In a free market, segregation would have never manifested itself in society because it would not be profitable for a business owner to deny service to an individual on this basis of his or her race.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ji ... s_by_State
It was a free market and segregation did manifest itself in society. You think things like sundown towns were the result of government intervention, no, they were the result of a deeply racist society willing to absorb any minor economic impact, assuming there even would be one to begin with, in order to ensure their racist views were the defacto law of the land.
Excuse me, but that simply is untrue. It may not work now due to social changes, but until the 60s businesses could and did as a matter of routine.It is not feasiable in a free market to open up a restaurant and only allow whites in,
http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhist ... B0527200A7
http://www.picturehistory.com/product/id/3521
http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb0b69n6qr/
Yes, they did, eventually. Up to that point, the free market buses were still segregated however. Interesting story about why blacks began to boycott them, maybe you should look into it before claiming the market won't allow segregation.as it wasn't feasible to only allow whites to ride buses in the south. When blacks began to boycott public transportation, public transportation businesses began to incur huge losses and were eventually forced to accept their demands.
This is an absurd claim. The market most certainly does encourage behavior that maximizes profits.This is an absurd argument. The market does not encourage any type of behavior.
Because they keep membership fees high to keep those people out, aka catering to exclusivity.The market allows individuals to engage in whatever type of behavior they want as long as it doesn't harm or impede the freedom of other individuals. The reason you don't see very many working class people at yacht clubs is because most working class people can't afford memberships to yacht clubs, only individuals with disposable income can.
Wrong! Segregation was ended when federal laws overruled state laws. The states did not change their laws, the feds simply ruled they could not be enforced. You keep conflating state government and federal government, this is an equivocation fallacy, and it is naughty. Bad Winepusher, bad.Because segregation was enforced by the government. The concept isn't very hard to comprehend Abraxas, so I don't know why you're having such a hard time here. Civil rights injustices were the fault of the government. Segregation and institutional racism ended when the existing laws were changed.
A complete misrepresentation of the position. Due to centuries of abuse, African Americans are at a disadvantage. Statistically, they come from poorer neighborhoods, haven't had access to the same educational facilities, are still widely and actively discriminated against. Affirmative action helps to narrow the gap created by a circumstance beyond their control that was inflicted upon them by Jim Crow and segregation. There is a systematic disadvantage to being black in America, it seems only fitting we take systematic action to overcome it.Reverse discrimination is the synonym for Affirmative Action. I didn't plan on debating Affirmative Action here but if you want to then I'd be happy to debate it. All you have done is dismiss any criticism of reverse racism as nonsense without providing any logical or intellectual argument. Racism, as it's defined, is merely discrimination based upon an individuals race. If an employer hires a white individual over a black individual solely because he's white, liberals like you would begin to indignantly scream racism at the top of your lungs. If an employer hires a black individual over a white individual solely because he's black, liberals like you start applauding and praising the decision. In your mind, the former is racism and the latter is 'affirmative action.' In my mind both instances are examples of racism. Do you see the inconsistency in your position yet?
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WinePusher
Post #20
WinePusher wrote:Abraxas and I have agreed to a revised format for this debate to allow for more posting and rebuttals....for the remainder of the debate. So the next post in this thread will be post 3, a rebuttal by Abraxas.
Sure. If you want to bring up unresolved issues in the comments thread I'd be happy to participate there also. I'll probably be doing that myself with the upcoming posts.Abraxas wrote:Thank you WP, I appreciate you posting this. It would have felt in appropriate, as the first person to post under the new format, for me to make the announced change in rules or to make another post without announcing it.
WinePusher wrote:Comparatively, labor conditions in the United States were far better off than the conditions that existed in many other countries at that time. Another factor that characterized the industrialization of America was immigration, and the magnet that attracted so many immigrants was labor. Immigrants came because working conditions were better than the conditions that existed in their own country.
You have to compare something with something Abraxas. I'm making realistic comparisons between the working conditions of industrialized countries at that time and all you're doing is using some unrealistic arbitrary standard. Yea, it would have been ideal if working conditions and worker's rights were perfect at the inception of the industrial age. But society doesn't operate like that. When a new phenomona, such as industrialization, comes into existence problems with this new phenomona, such as the maltreatment and safety of workers, will also come into existence. These problems are dealt with gradually. During the time periods you base your argument on, industry was just beginning in America. As industry developed and expanded, working conditions also rose. Capitol goods are a product of production and are themselves subject to innovation. Somebody has to produce the machinery used in producing automobiles, somebody has to produce the electrical wiring used to power the building. As industry expanded things like machinery were innovated to accomidate things such as safety, as industry expanded it created demand for specialized labor which lead to the creation of things like benefits and insurance and pensions.Abraxas wrote:I don't see how any of this changes my argument. I think our bar can be a bit nigher than not the worst in the world.
WinePusher wrote:Can you actually define a wage that would be appropriate? Again Abraxas, in a free labor market wages are determined by an easy concept: supply and demand, the supply and demand for workers who are allocated to different firms through wages. If a firm has a demand for a particular skill, and the supply of workers who possess that skill is plentiful than the wage is necessarily low. Anybody off the street in 19th century America could work in a factory, meaning that the supply of factory workers was high which forced wages to be low. Wage controls merely distort the market mechanism and create unconventional problems. This is what ultimately confuses me, it's as if you believe the government knows everything. The government just knows the right wage that workers should be paid, the government just knows how many Americans ought to own homes. Matters like these are governed by market mechanisms.
The reason you're confused is because you're not looking at the situation in terms of supply and demand. Wages are merely prices, specifically they are the price of labor. If there's a huge supply of labor then the wage is going to be low no matter what. Why do you think there's a wage discrepency between physicians and hospital cafeteria workers? Because almost anybody can be a hospital cafeteria worker, meaning the supply of hospital cafeteria workers is huge which is why they are paid a relatively low wage.Abraxas wrote:Forced them to be low? Yeah, I'll bet the industrialists in the day suffered much arm twisting and lamentation before they were cruelly forced to make more money by cutting the wages of their workers. No, the industrialists took advantage of a large labor force that allowed them to cut wages, in some cases to levels that amounted to virtual slavery, such as Ludlow.
Unions don't fight for wages that are fair, a wage that's fair is determined by the market. Unions fight for wages that are above the market value. And how do you think a wage increase is paid for? If a company raises the wages of their employees because they are forced to at gun point rather than raising the wages voluntarily because of increased revenue, who makes up the difference? Free lunches don't exist Abraxas. You can't simply raise the wages of unionized workers without creating negative effects elsewhere. When unionized workers get a wage increase, the difference comes out of the wage of non union workers. Unions raise the wages of their members and at the same time lower the wages of non union workers. Another thing is that if a business is forced to pay a higher wage to a group of unionized workers, they will most likely raise the price of whatever good or service they offer in order to compensate for the difference. If you only look at the surface, you see that unions do alot of beneficial things for their members. If you look below the surface, you'd see that unions do alot of harm to nonunion workers and average consumers who suffer from higher prices.Abraxas wrote:Can I define what wages are appropriate? Probably not. Can economists find an appropriate minimum wage? Yes, they have before, they can again. But more to the point, not all government controls require direct caps. Things like guaranteeing union protections can help give workers the tools they need to help keep their own wages fair.
WinePusher wrote:Work days are not uniform across all firms, not every worker has the same hours as another worker. In a free market, workers negotiate their hours with their employer. More hours means more money Abraxas, perhaps some workers prefered working long egregious hours because it meant they'd earn more in their paycheck. You don't know, I don't know, only they know and they express their desires through negotiation. The government may think it's preferable to impose 40 hour work weeks, but this merely inhibits the freedom of workers during negotiation.
Whether you're paid by the hour or on comission, the more time you put into your job the more money you get.Abraxas wrote:Excuse me, on what basis do you assert more hours means more in their paycheck?
It's funny how every argument you make has already been refuted. The fact that we both accept is that work hours declined over time. What we apparently disagree on is what caused the decline. You attribute it to unions as you've done with nearly everything, I would say it's because of the fact that over time worker productivity increases. In a given hour, an individual worker might be able to produce 2 automobiles and if the quota is 10 automobiles per day the worker would have to work 5 hours per day. Over time, the productivity of the worker increases so that he might be able to produce 4 cars in a given hour which would reduce the number of hours he would have to work to about 2 and a half hours per day. Shorter work weeks are the result of a gradual increase of worker productivity, not unions.Abraxas wrote:Very often this wasn't the case and workers had to engage in unpaid labor or get fired. But hey, that's the free market, right? Work longer hours for nothing or get the axe and lose the ability to feed your family, choose freely. I do know, Winepusher, because I know what rights workers pushed for when they did unionize and among those rights were standardized hours and pay for overtime. If workers did not want these things they would not have unionized to demand these things. Who do you think pushed the 40 hour work week to begin with if not labor unions, aka laborers?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
WinePusher wrote:I really don't think you know what you're talking about here. Real wages refers to the final wage earned after inflation has been incorporated. It's the same as Real GDP, where inflation has already been incorporated, as opposed to Nominal GDP, where inflation hasn't been incorporated. Real wages did decline under Reagan, but not because of the reason you've provided. If you know your history, you'd realize that inflation was rampant throughout the decades preceding Reagan and even into the early years of his presidency. Around that same exact time real wages began to decline. That's because inflation reduces real wages. It's the reason why inflation is a problem in the first place. If prices rise and real wages rise at the same time there would be no problem, but what happens is prices rise, nominal wages generally rise, and real wages almost always fall. So, the stagnation in real wages before and during the Reagan administration is traced back to inflation, not the 'weaking of union protections under federal law.'
This would be a good argument if it were actually true, but it isn't. You can't expect real wages to rise back up right away. Nothing operates instantly like that. It takes time for the different variables to react to one another. Real wages began to rise gradually after inflation was wrung out, not instantly. Look at whatever graph you want and it will correspond to what I'm saying. And besides, you've made no logical argument explaining how weakening unions causes real wages to decline. What you're saying is nonsense. Unions do nothing to benefit workers. They are worthless institutions that are only good at vandalizing neighborhoods and harassing communities.Abraxas wrote:Sorry, reality disagrees. If what you are saying were true, we should expect real wages to start increasing again once inflation was reversed by the mid eighties, and, behold, it slowed to a fraction of the rate before the inflation crisis. Inflation was not the cause of the stagnation in real wages, if it were you should see a consistent change across all tiers in reduction of real income, instead, you see the very wealthy go up and the poor fall flat. That is a result of the destruction of regulation of industry.
WinePusher wrote:Go ahead and show how the goal of profit maximization destroys the conditions in which people work, the wages people recieve, and the benefits and pensions people recieve. You think profits are the root of all societies problems and you have a biased and skewed understanding of what profits actually are.
Abraxas wrote:Wages are costs, cutting costs raises profits, raised profits is good for the employer, and so cutting wages as much as you can get away with is good for the employer.
They're miniscule costs when compared to all the other costs employers have to pay for. I'm not a business guru, but generally speaking wage cuts and layoffs come very last. That shows that there are other more effective ways to maximize profits rather than cutting wages or laying off workers. But really, your alternative scenario is not realistic. The higher a minimum wage, the more people lose out on jobs. Despite what you may think, there is alot of value in a job that pays virtually nothing, especially if you're just entering the abor market. It gives you experience and an oppurtunity to climb the ladder. Minimum wage laws destroy these oppurtunities that would otherwise be available to individuals without any experience or skills and makes it much more difficult for them to get a strong foot in the job market.
WinePusher wrote:But aside from that, you have not really specified anything you'd like the government to do. What intiatives and policies would exist under this governmental framework?
I broght up the minimum wage in another thread and you seemed reluctant to debate it. If you want to debate it, I'll be happy to participate in the comments thread. But the minimum wage, along with unions, end up hurting workers rather than benefiting them. This has been a motif of government intervention that you haven't caught onto yet. Whenever the government intervenes, you get results that are opposite of what was expected. Minimum wage laws are expected to benefit workers, they do the exact opposite. Rent control laws are expected to benefit consumers, they do the exact opposite. If you actually cared about workers, you would be behind a national right to work law and I doubt you are.Abraxas wrote:Much of it is or was being done, formalize protections for unions, legislate things like minimum safe work conditions, minimum wage laws, socialized medicine, etc. I feel many of these things should be expanded in certain ways. The current minimum wage is insufficient, inspections should be more complete and inspectors have more authority to cite companies for dangerous behavior; things of this nature. Companies will learn how to be more competitive in that environment or they will leave it and a niche will open up and new companies will come in. If they can't operate fairly and safely, maybe they shouldn't operate at all.
WinePusher wrote:This is a poor argument Abraxas. You happily attribute any advancement in civil rights to the federal government, but ignore the hinderences in civil rights that the federal government was responsible for. Many of the cases you cite are merely instances of the Court correcting or reversing the abborent decisions it made before. Brown v. Board of Education was merely a reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson. Had there been no Plessy v. Ferguson there would have been no need for Brown v. Board of Education. Had the Supreme Court not set the precedent of de jure segregation in Plessy there would not have been a need for half of the cases you cited. Using your logic, there would have been no Civil War had there been no Dred Scott v. Sandford. This is a classic example of starting the story in the middle. If you had began the story at the beginning, you'd realize that it was the government that was the primary entity responsible for segregation and racism and slavery and that these cases you cite are merely corrections of prior actions. It's like saying that a mother deserves an award for caring and attending to her mentally retarded child, when in fact the only reason why the child is retarded is that the mother drank and did drugs during her pregnancy.
Ok Abraxas, I guess you need a crash course on federalism. Whenever the Supreme Court rules on a case, that ruling becomes binding law at the federal level. Knowing this, why would the Supreme Court of the United States (an institution of the federal government) take up a case concerning state law? Because the issue was a federal issue, the issue was the 'Seperate but Equal' doctrine which was a federal statute, not a state statute.Abraxas wrote:You are completely misrepresenting what happened there. Plessy v. Ferguson was a (bad) ruling that a state law in Louisiana did not violate constitution. It was not, as you are representing, a federal enforcement of segregation, but rather gave states the power to create their own laws, which states and local jurisdictions used to create their own segregation laws.
You have it all backwards. If there were no laws enforcing segregation in the first place, there would have been no need for any of this. You forget that the primary place where segregation occured were in the public schools, schools run by the government. There would have been no need to make it illegal because it wouldn't have been legal to begin with.Abraxas wrote:Put another way, this was an instance of the federal government not making something which is reprehensible illegal, in other words, leaving it to your free society, and they took it and ran to make racism over and systematic. Had the government ruled initially it was in violation of federal law, it would have solved the problem then instead of waiting until Brown. This is a case of insufficient government intervention, certainly not too much as you are pretending.
WinePusher wrote:Every single black individual who was denied access from entering a restaurant reserved for whites cost that restaurant owner his or her business. In a free market, segregation would have never manifested itself in society because it would not be profitable for a business owner to deny service to an individual on this basis of his or her race.
I'm well aware of the fact that Jim Crow laws were primarily state and local laws. I've never argued against that. What I'm saying is you have is a combination of two evils: state and local governments actively enforcing segregation and the federal government permitting state and local government to enforce segregation. You still haven't adequately answered my question. Absent government at any level, how would it be possible to enforce segregation? It wouldn't, structural segregation would dissolve if there was no government involved. If schools were private and didn't have a steady and reliable source of funding coming from the government, they would have to appeal to every single family and child out there regardless of their race. If the school was picky and only admitted white students they would be losing out on the tuition fees of the black students they rejected. By discriminating against blacks they are imposing a cost upon themselves that they would not have had otherwise. I suggest you start looking at this issue in terms of opportunity costs Abraxas, it'll clear up alot of things for you.Abraxas wrote:I don't believe you honestly think this is true. You know, as well as I do, the vast, vast majority of Jim Crow laws came from the state and local level, not federal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ji ... s_by_State
It was a free market and segregation did manifest itself in society. You think things like sundown towns were the result of government intervention, no, they were the result of a deeply racist society willing to absorb any minor economic impact, assuming there even would be one to begin with, in order to ensure their racist views were the defacto law of the land.
WinePusher wrote:It is not feasiable in a free market to open up a restaurant and only allow whites in,
Then tell me what exactly has changed in society between then and now.Abraxas wrote:Excuse me, but that simply is untrue. It may not work now due to social changes, but until the 60s businesses could and did as a matter of routine.
WinePusher wrote:as it wasn't feasible to only allow whites to ride buses in the south. When blacks began to boycott public transportation, public transportation businesses began to incur huge losses and were eventually forced to accept their demands.
You didn't refute my point. This is a classic example of segregation being dealt with by market mechanisms. Busing companies began to suffer a loss because they were engaging in segregation. They stopped segregating buses because their base of consumers was limited only to whites. This is why segregation isn't feasible in a free market.Abraxas wrote:Yes, they did, eventually. Up to that point, the free market buses were still segregated however. Interesting story about why blacks began to boycott them, maybe you should look into it before claiming the market won't allow segregation.
WinePusher wrote:This is an absurd argument. The market does not encourage any type of behavior.
Abraxas wrote:This is an absurd claim. The market most certainly does encourage behavior that maximizes profits.
Hahaha!!
This is only true for For Profit institutions. What about Not For Profit institutions, are they encouraged by the market to 'maximize' profits? Of course not. I'm talking about individuals, not businesses. In a free market, or perhaps to be more clear, in a free society racism is not encouraged or discouraged. In a free society you can harbor any opinions and beliefs you want to. If you are racist, you have a right to cling to those beliefs. You, however, do not have a right to exercise those beliefs because they impede the freedom of other individuals. And since you bring up the subject of profits, I'll go back to my original argument. In a market governed by Profit and Loss, excluding a large group of people from partaking in the service or product you provide would not maximize profits, it would instead minimize profits. WinePusher wrote:The market allows individuals to engage in whatever type of behavior they want as long as it doesn't harm or impede the freedom of other individuals. The reason you don't see very many working class people at yacht clubs is because most working class people can't afford memberships to yacht clubs, only individuals with disposable income can.
I'm sure you actually believe this, which is sad. Working class people generally have a lower amount of disposable income than the upper class do. So of course you're going to see more upper class people at plaes like yacht clubs because they have more disposable income. But let me guess, your liberal mentality leads you to believe that everybody should have a right to have yacht club memberships, and if someone can't afford the membership fees I and the rest of society should subsidize them?Abraxas wrote:Because they keep membership fees high to keep those people out, aka catering to exclusivity.
WinePusher wrote:Reverse discrimination is the synonym for Affirmative Action. I didn't plan on debating Affirmative Action here but if you want to then I'd be happy to debate it. All you have done is dismiss any criticism of reverse racism as nonsense without providing any logical or intellectual argument. Racism, as it's defined, is merely discrimination based upon an individuals race. If an employer hires a white individual over a black individual solely because he's white, liberals like you would begin to indignantly scream racism at the top of your lungs. If an employer hires a black individual over a white individual solely because he's black, liberals like you start applauding and praising the decision. In your mind, the former is racism and the latter is 'affirmative action.' In my mind both instances are examples of racism. Do you see the inconsistency in your position yet?
Have you ever analyzed the logic of the talking points you just posted? Blacks do come from poorer neighborhoods, many of these neighborhoods are located in populated urban cities such as chicago and new york city where progressive policies, such as government housing, welfare and rent control are ubiquitous. Blacks do attend poor quality schools that set them up for failure in life, these schols are government run and blacks are forced to attend them. Blacks are institutionally discriminated against by employers because the government forbids an employer to pay a young black individual with limited skills the market value of his or her labor. In some aspects blacks are a disadvantaged group, but that's because they are a group that have been subject to the tyrannies of government throughout their history in this country.Abraxas wrote:A complete misrepresentation of the position. Due to centuries of abuse, African Americans are at a disadvantage. Statistically, they come from poorer neighborhoods, haven't had access to the same educational facilities, are still widely and actively discriminated against. Affirmative action helps to narrow the gap created by a circumstance beyond their control that was inflicted upon them by Jim Crow and segregation. There is a systematic disadvantage to being black in America, it seems only fitting we take systematic action to overcome it.
There's an interesting book by Thomas Sowell called Affirmative Action Around the World where he analyzes preferential policies in various countries. One country he examines is India, where you would think Affirmative Action would be the most appropriate due to their caste system. You have a small faction of people, called untouchables, who are worthless members of society that don't and can never amount to anything. Guess what, the untouchables in India are far more disadvantaged than the blacks have ever been in America, yet as a collective group they have not benefited from AA. The society has merely harbored additional resentment against them because they are occupying positions they are unqualified to occupy. If a university has a certain limit on how many students they can admit, and they base their admissions criteria on not only academics but also ethnicity, you would have academially qualified students being rejected because they don't belong to a ethnic group. You cover your ears all you want Abraxas, but that's racism defined. If you were a great student in high school and were rejected from Yale only because they had to set aside a certain number of slots for black people and you weren't black, you would rightly feel angry. Anybody in that situation would be angry. All AA policies do is increase social tensions between racial groups.
Note: I just got home from break and had some spare time to respond to our head to head. Unfortunately tommorow I'm returning to my regular schedule and don't know when my next post will be up. But if you want to respond to some things I've written her in the comments thread I'll make an effort to participate there.
