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wateroverfire posted:How's that? Because, given your admittedly off-the-cuff model, there's nothing I see there that would allow for protection of existing civil rights, nor for their extension on issues such as gender wage equality and LGBT non-discrimination, which in general non-shitheads agree should be the case. Or were those in the "etc" at the end? I bring this up as numerous states, primarily but not exclusively in the South, have state laws and ordinances on the books that legalize discrimination in any number of venues should federal supremacy fall away. A federal government like the one you proposed very much resembles the bog-standard libertarian "night watchman" state, with a few cursory elements nailed on to deal with uncomfortable externality issues. Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 20:54
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wateroverfire posted:Except in the most contrived of cases this is not a thing that employers can do, though. Employers offer as much money as it takes to get acceptable people. That is pretty much the end of it at the low end of the wage distribution. There are too many employers with too many positions for them to be leveraging much of anything and a worker's risk of starvation or whatever is both 100% unknown to the potential employer and 100% out of his or her control.
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Oct 1, 2014 20:54
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wateroverfire posted:Let's try not to be obtuse and also keep things rational. This is so adorably wrong I have to point it out. I mean I actually agree with you, but that's because I'm a big dumb progressive. What you are describing is something that only exists in the context of government intervention. Under the common law or a "freedom of contact" system, your employment is presumed to be "at-will". You may leave whenever you so desire and your employer may fire you for any reason. Unless you explicitly contract for extra rights and privileges, you have none. In a classical contract system as imagined by most libertarian thinkers, an employer may make your continued employment contingent on anything they want. If they don't like you complaining about X, they may fire you, and your "retaliation" claim does not exist. With a few rare exceptions retaliation claims in America come from Title VII, the ADA, worker's comp and whistleblower laws. You have no natural right to these protections absent government intervention. Prior to the Progressive age there were only a few exceptions to this rule, the big one being you couldn't make someone's continued employment contingent on breaking the law. (Certain protected professions such as attorneys, trustees and doctors had additional projections that allow them to seek compensation when they were fired if it was found that their employment had become contingent on breaking one of their professional obligations or fiduciary duties.) Retaliation claims are naturally coercive. You are forcing an employer to continue compensating you in violation of their freedom to contract. They don't want you anymore! They have decided to end your employment because you won't shut up! Such is their right. If I hire you today as a secretary, there should be nothing stopping me from firing you tomorrow but offering you a position as my personal sex worker. This is completely consistent with the freedom to contract. Here's how the actual economic coercion comes in. In a system without state protection employers make all of their own rules. In the pre Progressive Era it was normal for lumber barons to contract with their employees to release them from any and all liability related to their job. If you were injured it was your sole responsibility. Sure your company had no safety standards, but your employees knew that perfectly well when they started working for you! After all, nothing made you sign the contract! Freedom! You could always look for work elsewhere. The protections we take for granted today, anti-discrimination, workers comp, ADA were all built in opposition to the right of contract preferred by modern libertarians and the old Gilded Age industrialists. They impose additional duties on contracts that would not exist otherwise. And remember these protections are imposed on contacts by force. Don't get me wrong I am glad that you see retaliation as wrong, but don't pretend there's any room in your theory for a retaliation claim without walking all over your precious freedom to contract and natural rights. E: for formatting. DEKH fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 20:57
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asdf32 posted:These leading questions are stupid. I promise that libertarians, like most people in this instance, don't share your values regarding the notion of exploitation. I apologize for asking questions in order to try to start a discussion about something related to the topic of this thread that I am interested in. Speaking of people whose economic value is below a living wage though, what should be done about these people, in your view?
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Oct 1, 2014 21:00
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LogisticEarth posted:Well, you see he thinks libertarianism only values people economically so when you mentioned economic value, your point sailed right over his head. It's actually beyond that. Despite many people's dislike of an economic centric view they've still internalized a great deal of it. You see that right here where people arguing from the left can't themselves divorce someones moral worth from their economic value and use one to try and determine the other. All societies need to calculate economic worth of people for the same reason a basketball team needs to evaluate basketball skills. And neither necessarily reflects on the moral worth of that person.
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Oct 1, 2014 21:04
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Well DEKH, whatever safety standards an individual worker is able to negotiate from the company is just the level of standards that his work is worth, end of story. Starry-eyed progressives think you can just pass a law and make eye protection or fire exits an economical investment in the worker's productivity but that's obviously nonsense because if workers brought in enough revenue to cover the cost of a fire escape, the free market would have already provided. You can't make them affordable by government fiat. 
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Oct 1, 2014 21:05
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wateroverfire posted:Except in the most contrived of cases this is not a thing that employers can do, though. Employers offer as much money as it takes to get acceptable people. That is pretty much the end of it at the low end of the wage distribution. There are too many employers with too many positions for them to be leveraging much of anything and a worker's risk of starvation or whatever is both 100% unknown to the potential employer and 100% out of his or her control. Wait... do you actually believe this? Do you realize that even now in the post-recession the number of unemployed workers to job opening ratio is still at roughly 2:1? Or that at the height of the recession it was roughly 7:1? I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I'll reiterate it here. People like you have this problem where you look at everything on an individual basis rather than an aggregate. You are right that there is no employer out there who cackles like a supervillain while giving you the choice between starvation or death. What there is however, is a system that on the aggregate makes that the choice. When you have been unemployed for two weeks and your rent is due in another two weeks you do not have the luxury of choosing not to take a job that is offered to you at an insultingly low wage. This is why you have university grads working at McDonalds and so forth. This economic coercion and imbalance of power in the employee/employer relationship drives down wages and would, without intervention, result in wages that are even more disgustingly low than our already appalling minimum wage. To pretend that employers don't take advantage of the desperation of low income workers is really naive of you. quote:I've not gone so far to argue the "taxation is theft" angle. First of all, if you're not going to agree with the standard position espoused by libertarians in this thread (and in general) then stake a loving claim when you make a point. You keep running around with your special snowflake brand of libertarianism trying to use the same talking points and then claiming exception to the replies and it is tiresome. Secondly, I call bullshit. quote:Having the government deprive you of property or freedom due to not paying taxes/fees is somehow an acceptable form of the same. quote:Not sure this is really worth going into to any length, since I doubt we will find any common ground on the idea that taxation is inherently universally legitimate and that the amount of personal property that the government can lay claim to is up to and including 100%. It's not. You are making a moral argument in your posts that taxation can somehow be wrongful or illegitimate. Well you know what we call it when someone takes something from someone else in an illegitimate manner? We call it theft. quote:Perhaps we can start with examples from the preset and throughout history of fees and taxation used as punitive and specifically anti-competitive measures and go from there. By all means, continue. quote:The disagreement with the NAP is the application of it in interactions from the government to people and from the government to foreign entities. For example, I am not a fan of "limited kinetic actions" or "We tortured some folks." And that is not a solely libertarian position or one that most of us disagree with? I don't think we should be torturing people, or attacking foreign governments or anything of the sort. So why do you have to invoke it as some special secret language principle unique to libertarians?
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Oct 1, 2014 21:10
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AlternateAccount posted:I would argue that government policy has no role in creating wealth(and actually functionally cannot do so) or providing advantage. When you say that you would argue that, you mean you'd do so if it weren't ludicrous and without logical or empirical foundation, right? I really want to hear your thought process on this one. It is the blindest of blind assertions.
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Oct 1, 2014 21:13
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I'm just going to throw out there to whatever flavor of libertarian will choose to ignore how they propose the internet infrastructure works in their form of government. This is generally hard for them to answer because a statist IT professional who actually works on this stuff for a living tends to know more about the subject than their libertarian founders 100 years ago. Please explain how the internet is possible in your libertarian future, I really want to know. Unfortunately if you can't answer even a theoretically plausible way (I will even give you sci fi explanations on how the technology would work) you must abandon the internet forever or you're a hypocrite. Go on then 
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Oct 1, 2014 21:17
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asdf32 posted:It's actually beyond that. Despite many people's dislike of an economic centric view they've still internalized a great deal of it. You see that right here where people arguing from the left can't themselves divorce someones moral worth from their economic value and use one to try and determine the other. So does a person with an economic worth of $.50 still deserve to live? If they do, then do they also deserve to live with dignity? If they do then how do you propose making sure that these things are taken care of within our society. If you acknowledge that some people are worthless within the work force, but that they still deserve to live with dignity then what method do you suggest to make sure they earn enough to do so? A Mincome? Minimum wage? 'Charity'? If not that is fine to. It is okay for you to say that you think those people don't deserve to live.
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Oct 1, 2014 21:17
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Caros posted:This economic coercion and imbalance of power in the employee/employer relationship drives down wages and would, without intervention, result in wages that are even more disgustingly low than our already appalling minimum wage. To pretend that employers don't take advantage of the desperation of low income workers is really naive of you. Based on your wage logic, where the minumum wage is the only thing that keeps us all from being paid pennies, why aren't we ALL making the minimum wage, then? Minimum wage has literally zero bearing on what 95% of the country is paid. I am more saying that "taxation is theft" is not really a useful way to discuss a plan for taxes and funding what government does exist. I think it's preferable to tie taxation to the service that those taxes provide, when possible. Excise taxes on gasoline, etc. And the point about the NAP was that that was the major libertarian objection to war when someone else stated that libertarians LOVED war because the free market loves war because war=profit.
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Oct 1, 2014 21:37
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There sure are a lot of despicable statists and thieves posting in this thread calling themselves libertarians.  Yet the more they explain their beliefs, they seem to actually be pro-austerity Tories whose chief idea is "money isn't infinite." Maybe they should start a Tory thread.
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Oct 1, 2014 21:37
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AlternateAccount posted:Based on your wage logic, where the minumum wage is the only thing that keeps us all from being paid pennies, why aren't we ALL making the minimum wage, then? Minimum wage has literally zero bearing on what 95% of the country is paid. Are you somehow unaware of what the words "Low income" or "Low Skilled" or "Uneducated" mean? I've mentioned multiple times in this thread that the phenomenon that we are discussing, wherein employers exploit low income workers through economic coercion is unique to people a certain subset of workers, generally the low skilled or uneducated. The whole point of a minimum wage is to prevent the exploitation of the lowest wage workers by their employers. Employers who even with our current minimum wage are penny pinching to the extent that they release guides to help their employees sign up for food stamps to let them survive rather than pay a livable wage. A wage bump to $10.10 an hour is expected to have a positive effect on the wages of 27.8 million workers, which is roughly 18% of the US workforce, so your assertion that the minimum wage has "Literally zero bearing on what 95% of the country is paid" is blatantly false. Moreover, even if it was in fact true, that is not a compelling argument for eliminating or weakening the minimum wage. Saying that the mininmum wage only impacts the people at the bottom 5% of the economy, which is not true, does not negate the fact that the people at the bottom 5% of the economy are the most poo poo upon and vulnerable. At what percentage does enacting a policy intended to lessen exploitation of the most vulnerable of society become appropriate. Do you agree that the minimum wage is of more value when it affects 18%? What if it helped 30% or 50%? Is there actually a point where you think it is worth having, or are you just trying to say "It doesn't really affect anyone so why even have it" as a way to pretend that getting rid of it would not be a big loving deal? Likewise are there other policies you don't think matter because they only affect a small percentage? The NHIS estimates that less than 5% of people in the US identify as gay or bisexual. Do you think that getting rid of policies that protect such workers from abuse in the workplace don't matter because they have "Literally zero bearing on 95% of the country?" quote:I am more saying that "taxation is theft" is not really a useful way to discuss a plan for taxes and funding what government does exist. I think it's preferable to tie taxation to the service that those taxes provide, when possible. Excise taxes on gasoline, etc. Okay, so rather than saying taxation is theft you instead want to change how we fund things. This is a fair enough thing to discuss. For starters, why do you think it is appropriate to tie taxation to services that they provide. Your example, Gasoline taxes, is a regressive tax that would negatively impact low income households at the benefit of the wealthy, which is why we typically don't pay for roads like that wherever possible. So what other examples do you have? Do you have a problem with progressive taxation in general? How would you fund programs like Social Security, Medicare or welfare programs? I'm actually eager to hear your views on how you'd handle taxation. Caros fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 21:49
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AlternateAccount posted:And the point about the NAP was that that was the major libertarian objection to war when someone else stated that libertarians LOVED war because the free market loves war because war=profit. The NAP is a shield for the rich against retaliation from the poor in an attempt to give themselves the moral highground and further justify their greed. It's a joke. That young man born to a drug addict stealing to survive? He's a horrible aggressor and villain. The boss who assigns you unpaid overtime after finding out that your wife is pregnant, knowing he has you over a barrel? A savvy businessman and true son of Von Mises.
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Oct 1, 2014 21:55
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Caros posted:So does a person with an economic worth of $.50 still deserve to live? If they do, then do they also deserve to live with dignity? If they do then how do you propose making sure that these things are taken care of within our society. If you acknowledge that some people are worthless within the work force, but that they still deserve to live with dignity then what method do you suggest to make sure they earn enough to do so? A Mincome? Minimum wage? 'Charity'? Hang on, there is no "If" regarding the recognition that some people can't/won't produce economic output. You recognize this right? So me pointing it out means very little. As for the rest of your questions you ask this as if society hasn't already answered it. Every single developed country has decided to provide significant amounts of assistance in a range of forms to ensure people don't literally die if they run out of money. Like 99.9% of people, I support this wholeheartedly.
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Oct 1, 2014 22:02
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Caros posted:Are you somehow unaware of what the words "Low income" or "Low Skilled" or "Uneducated" mean? I've mentioned multiple times in this thread that the phenomenon that we are discussing, wherein employers exploit low income workers through economic coercion is unique to people a certain subset of workers, generally the low skilled or uneducated. So what do you think would happen to the 95%+ of earners who are paid more than minimum wage if the law were repealed tomorrow? And as for the shady science all around of minimum wage effects, you can find a study to basically say just about anything about how it will affect the economy. Skipping any of the common argument that a higher minimum wage will decrease the available number of jobs(which is fairly universally believed, but considered a necessary evil,) do you think it will have an inflationary effect? Tying taxation to services provided primarily benefits in keeping the cash where it's meant to go, offering some degree of compartmentalization. As much as I hate the word used to justify anything, is it appropriate to say that taxation that more directly funds the government actions that create the utilized service is inherently more fair? I don't particularly care if taxes are progressive or regressive, and I don't think trying to produce one outcome or another should be a consideration. Everyone's taxes are too high. It also returns to that idea that someone else having more doesn't inherently mean that you have less as a consequence. I'd eliminate social security as anything regarding its current form. It's a transfer payment from young to old and is unsustainable. I'd also eliminate Medicare and federal welfare programs. Now, all that said, I am not personally as vehemently opposed to the idea of some sort of safety net as a lot of the Pure Strain Libertarians, but I also don't think it should be anywhere near as gigantic as it is now. I'd argue that a lot of these federal programs specifically allow low-wage employers to keep their wages low. Reducing/eliminating vast swaths of current bureaucracy and military spending would allow us to reduce the generalized tax burden for everyone, for a start.
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Oct 1, 2014 22:05
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Talmonis posted:The NAP is a shield for the rich against retaliation from the poor in an attempt to give themselves the moral highground and further justify their greed. It's a joke. Could you please cite a source as to what percentage of violent crime is committed by people who are literally born into drug addiction and a perfect innocent souls who were set upon this path by cruel fate with no free will to exercise whatsoever? Then perhaps we can come up with some sort of plan to deal with that 0.0001% of criminals. Also consider that libertarian drug policy and the effect that would have on related crime.
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Oct 1, 2014 22:07
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asdf32 posted:Hang on, there is no "If" regarding the recognition that some people can't/won't produce economic output. You recognize this right? So me pointing it out means very little. So you 100% agree with me but will refuse to answer my question by stating what sort of method you suggest to take care of people who cannot or do not have any 'economic value'. So basically you're just punting the ball and saying "Yeah well they'll obviously get taken care of!" That was a pretty lovely non-answer, even for you.
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Oct 1, 2014 22:08
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Talmonis posted:The NAP is a shield for the rich against retaliation from the poor in an attempt to give themselves the moral highground and further justify their greed. It's a joke. In addition, the NAP can be twisted to suit their needs. Terrorism is an aggression against our country, that squatter is initiating aggression against your private property. Better shoot them!
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Oct 1, 2014 22:16
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Rhjamiz posted:In addition, the NAP can be twisted to suit their needs. Terrorism is an aggression against our country, that squatter is initiating aggression against your private property. Better shoot them! Or you can always abandon the NAP and go full Randian, and say that Arabs should be bombed because they are savages on top of the oil There's a veritable smorgasbord of positions you can retreat to, without fully claiming them!
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Oct 1, 2014 22:27
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Isn't there some Mises or Hayes quote about how anyone who doesn't subscribe to Libertarian virtues should be enslaved? Or am I imagining things as more evil than they are?
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Oct 1, 2014 22:32
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I think that was hoppe.
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Oct 1, 2014 22:34
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Rhjamiz posted:Isn't there some Mises or Hayes quote about how anyone who doesn't subscribe to Libertarian virtues should be enslaved? Hoppe is the one who believes both liberal democrats and communists are so inimical to a free society that their very existence is a threat and they're to be enslaved, imprisoned,or killed, in that order depending on the amount of retaliatory force it takes to render them harmless. This is one of Hoppe's comparatively Good Opinions, because unlike his raging white supremacism, at least believing in democracy is a choice.
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Oct 1, 2014 22:35
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Jesus gently caress, do you even read what you are replying to? I cited you a statistic in that loving post you are quoting wherein it is explained in easy to understand numbers that 27.8 Million workers would get a bump, which is roughly 18% of all workers in the US. This means that the start of your post should read as follows: quote:So what do you think would happen to the 82%+ of earners who are paid more than minimum wage if the law were repealed tomorrow? Even if you are arguing based solely on the fact that currently only 4.8% of workers actually make the minimum wage, that is still a misleading number because it doesn't cover anyone who makes a penny over the minimum wage, despite the fact that the minimum wage has a bolstering effect on wages, and thus someone who makes $8 or$8.50 makes that much largely because the minimum wage sets the ground floor higher than it might otherwise be. Factoring in even workers making $1 more nearly doubles the number of workers to 8.6%. Now to your actual post. quote:So what do you think would happen to the 95%+ of earners who are paid more than minimum wage if the law were repealed tomorrow? And as for the shady science all around of minimum wage effects, you can find a study to basically say just about anything about how it will affect the economy. Well if the law were repealed we'd also have child labor again, so lets go with amended. If it were amended you probably wouldn't see an immediate change. Instead people who are new hired would simply be hired at progressively lower and lower wages until businesses found a floor at which workers simply could not work. I say could not because eventually there is a floor beneath minimum wage where working is pointless, where a worker simply cannot pay his bills/eat/etc for what he is being paid. It'd take a while to reach that level. Currently employed workers would be trapped even further into their jobs that would exploit them further since they would have yet more leverage knowing that employees would not find better wages in the new, shittier job market. Some places might just give straight up pay cuts where they could get away with it. As to your assertion that there is 'shady science' regarding that study, I would suggest you actually read it, since it isn't actually that hard to calculate the bolstering effect of the minimum wage, nor is it difficult to physically count the number of people who would actually get a raise as a result of the increase. quote:Skipping any of the common argument that a higher minimum wage will decrease the available number of jobs(which is fairly universally believed, but considered a necessary evil,) do you think it will have an inflationary effect? HAHAHAHAHA!!! No... no we're not going to skip over something that you are outright lying about. It has not been fairly universally believed since the 1990's, and study after study conducted over the last two decades suggest that the loss of jobs as a result of a higher minimum wage would be minor at worst. While I will admit there is controversy insofar as conservatives pay economists to pretend that it is true, do not for a loving second try to pass off the lie that it is 'universally believed'. And yes, it may have a small inflationary effect that will be drastically outweighed by the increase in wages to the poorest in society, who will then have more money to spend in a fashion that will be economically beneficial to everyone. quote:Tying taxation to services provided primarily benefits in keeping the cash where it's meant to go, offering some degree of compartmentalization. Tying cash to where it is 'meant to go' is a largely pointless endeavor that is almost completely outweighed by the fact that such taxes will have negtive societal consequences. quote:As much as I hate the word used to justify anything, is it appropriate to say that taxation that more directly funds the government actions that create the utilized service is inherently more fair? Okay, so now we are getting to the meat of your entitlement. First I'm going to ask, are you aware of the concept of marginal utility of money. I suspect you are but I'm going to go over it so we don't have a back and forth where I'm talking about something you don't understand. It works like this. We have two men, one makes $20,000 and one makes $20,000,000 they both pay the same 'fair tax' rate of 10% and hell, lets throw a gas excise that amounts to $500 a year in gas costs to pay for roads. So the first man pays his taxes of $2,000, and then another $500 for gas taxes. For him this accounts to 12.5% of his income. Moreover, for him this is a LOT of money. At $20,000 that amount is well over a months rent, perhaps even two months. It might be his entire bill for clothing and entertainment for the year, gone from his pocket. The second man also pays his taxes, in this case $2,000,500. The number is clearly larger, but at the end he is left with $17,999,500. His actual percentage including the fixed regressive gas tax is 10.0025... I think. It might be 10.025, I'm too tired to do the math properly. So clearly the gas tax is unfair as poo poo when it comes to percentage, but more importantly the rich man is not in any way harmed by paying his taxes. He could pay another $2,000,000 or another $10,000,000 and still be able to live in obscene comfort to the end of his days. Now that isn't to say that taxes should be punitive, its saying that non-progressive taxation is the opposite of fair. Regressive taxes such as gasoline taxes basically have no effect on the quality of living of the wealthy, but have a significant effect on the quality of living of the poor. As it stands we have obligations that we expect the government to meet as a society. We want things like roads, police, military, FDA, EPA, you name it. And we do have to pay for these things somehow. Because this is a fact of life, we have the choice on how to pay for it. And you are suggesting that we take the money 'equally' from everyone, despite the fact that taking the money in that fashion is heavily damaging to the lives of the worst off in society, something that has negative impacts that ripple throughout in the form of all the nastiness associated with poverty. Despite your protestations, someone is going to pay for these services and if it isn't the wealthy then it is the poor. So yes, if someone else has more that does absolutely mean that someone else is going to have less within this context. Also, Taxes are at historic loving lows and have been for most of my lifetime. What would you consider to be taxes that are not 'too high?' quote:I'd eliminate social security as anything regarding its current form. It's a transfer payment from young to old and is unsustainable. I'd also eliminate Medicare and federal welfare programs. Social Security would be fiscally solvent until my children are thinking about buying burial plots for themselves provided the government lifted the cap on contributions (which is in and of itself a regressive tax. Saying its unsustainable is a bald face lie or a complete misunderstanding of the numbers involved, your choice. Actually, just in general, are you serious? Eliminating Social Security... well what exactly would you replace it with? Are you aware that prior to the introduction of social security 2/3rds of america's elderly lived in poverty, a number that is now down around 10%? Are you aware that half of all retiree's get their sole income from social security? What exactly would you do for the people who desperately need these programs? Hell, even assuming you keep it in place for current beneficiaries like the stupid loving Ryan plan, what do you propose doing with the millions of elderly who try to retire without safety nets? Are we just going to go back to the 1910's where parents simply have to become a lifelong burden to their children once they reach old age? I know I certainly couldn't take care of my wife's parents and I'm pretty drat well off. And the same thing with medicare. I just can't believe that you think that eliminating the most successful social programs in history is a smart thing to do.
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Oct 1, 2014 22:48
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AlternateAccount posted:So what do you think would happen to the 95%+ of earners who are paid more than minimum wage if the law were repealed tomorrow? And as for the shady science all around of minimum wage effects, you can find a study to basically say just about anything about how it will affect the economy. Skipping any of the common argument that a higher minimum wage will decrease the available number of jobs(which is fairly universally believed, but considered a necessary evil,) do you think it will have an inflationary effect? This is of course setting aside the fact that the economic consensus regarding minimum wage laws' impact on employment is not in consensus with your belief and that the economic consensus has been moving away from your belief for some time now. Explain Mississippi and Alabama with regards to their non existent minimum wage laws existing beside high unemployment and poverty rates. quote:I'd eliminate social security as anything regarding its current form. It's a transfer payment from young to old and is unsustainable. Without Social Security, the poverty rate for those aged 65 and over would meet or exceed 40 percent in 39 states; with Social Security, it is less than 10 percent in the large majority of states. Social Security lifts more than 1.2 million elderly people out of poverty in California and Florida, >nearly 900,000 in New York and Texas, almost 800,000 in Pennsylvania, and over half a million in Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and North Carolina. For women age 65 and over, the poverty rate would move from 11 percent to 48.6 percent if SS did not exist. Eliminating the cap on payroll tax makes Social Security solvent indefinitely. Social Security solvency has been extended to 2036 due to improved economic outlook stemming from the US refusal to take on an austerity approach to the financial collapse. Explain why I should support radically increasing poverty as opposed to leveraging a 6.2 percent tax on income above 113,000 dollars a year. Why is it better for your grandmother to rot to death? Why do you hate little old ladies of all people? Medicare, and social insurance in general, outperforms private health insurance programs in terms of cost, access, and customer satisfaction ratings. Why is this a bad thing that needs to be abolished? President Kucinich fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 23:04
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President Kucinich posted:Why is this a bad thing that needs to be abolished? Freedom
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Oct 1, 2014 23:08
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Caros posted:And the same thing with medicare. I just can't believe that you think that eliminating the most successful social programs in history is a smart thing to do. Speaking of conservatives in general, it gives me great joy to know that they are basically frothing at the mouth in their desire to eliminate social security and medicare, but they cannot touch it and survive due to the fact that the very heart of their base is made up of Old (White) People. Oh, they'll try though. How they'll try.
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Oct 1, 2014 23:10
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I've brought this up to libertarians in person, but I haven't been able to articulate it in writing before because it is impossible to explain to people who were brought up middle class: in your perfect system, I kill you and take your stuff. Over the internet, this sounds like bluster but a good point was brought up: what about people whose labour value is less than a living wage? No, I don't mean the propensity for poor people to commit more property crime. If defending private property is a job, and private property is only private because people are willing to protect it with their life for money, there is also property that isn't worth defending and people who can't eat without taking in more property than they can afford. When responsibility is spread out across an entire government's worth of people, maybe someone robbing me isn't worth the police response but it really helps people on the cusp whose lives and assets would be swept up in the rolling riot I see eating libertopia. I've never seen a credible countervailing force from libertarian literature. The people who would be the DRO would be better served joining the mob and there would be no legal pressure for them not to. The golden horde would happen and I've never met a libertarian who wouldn't be eaten alive. Natural forces like resource scarcity and entropy don't obey the non aggression principal so private property is as moot as the 33 house-mates-with-one-bathroom's right to their own toilet.
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Oct 1, 2014 23:14
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Caros posted:And yes, it may have a small inflationary effect that will be drastically outweighed by the increase in wages to the poorest in society, who will then have more money to spend in a fashion that will be economically beneficial to everyone. Wait wait, where does an inflationary effect come from? It can't be from raising prices to cover the costs, because I thought prices were set at the intersection of supply and demand such that if manufacturers raised prices, the loss in sales would outweight the increased profit margin on each item and profits would fall (likewise lowering prices below market price would not cause a big enough rise in volume to make up for the price decreease). If a manufacturer could raise its prices and still see increased profits despite a drop in sales, it would already be doing that now even without a minimum wage hike. The company would have to take the cost from profits, and only if the extra costs made weaker competitors insolvent could the company finally raise prices in response to the supply constriction of its competitors going out of business. Is the inflation supposed to come from increased demand? How? No new money was created, so the only way it could increase demand is by bringing money into the economy that was previously not circulating (stashed away in the Cayman Islands, perhaps, instead of paid back to the workers). Okay, that makes sense, but we're in a recession. Increasing demand is a good thing, we've got oodles of unused production capacity that would be brought on line, increasing the supply of goods and heading off inflation. Yeah after we're in full boom again we might start to see it adding to inflation, but as you note this is an unambiguous good because it will be outweighed by the increase in wages and putting formerly idle money to work was good anyway.
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Oct 1, 2014 23:17
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AlternateAccount posted:So if a principle cannot be applied to perfection, it cannot be used to advise decision making? Hmm. When I pointed out that libertarianism wouldn't eliminate or even reduce war, the attempted counter was that libertarianism is based on non aggression. This is not a good argument, but it's the one that you made. In order to be effective, your argument requires that everyone perfectly obeys the non-aggression principle. Now that you're being called out for making a moronic argument based on hopes and dreams, you're trying to backpedal to a more defensible position: that we can try to base policy on non-aggression even if most people won't follow the principle. But in doing this, you're just admitting defeat: even if you have a society built on libertarianism, you recognize that war will never go away because humans are aggressive, which renders moot the "we will stop having wars" claim of libertarianism. quote:
You may prefer that, but that has nothing to do with the type of society that would be created by libertarianism. War is profitable and a natural outcome of the free market. If you agree that not everyone is going to abide by the non aggression principle, then you agree that libertarianism has no claim on peace (we could also talk about how you can be a pacifist without being a libertarian, but that's obvious)
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Oct 1, 2014 23:17
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quote:And I never said it "ends all war" but I'd rather that war was only waged in cases of pure defense. I mean, other nations manage this, I'd say there are more than a few examples to learn from. Yes, we must wage a defensive war against grandmas.
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Oct 1, 2014 23:29
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President Kucinich posted:Yes, we must wage a defensive war against grandmas. #notMYgrandma
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Oct 1, 2014 23:37
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They would replace it with Forward Thinking about your old age.
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Oct 1, 2014 23:41
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I think we can all agree that part of a mother's duty towards raising her kids is suck-starting a shotgun when they grow up that way mothers avoid stealing from them in old age.
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Oct 1, 2014 23:49
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Grand Theft Autobot posted:They would replace it with Forward Thinking about your old age. In short, we must face the fact that the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in human organs.
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Oct 1, 2014 23:51
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Caros posted:So you 100% agree with me but will refuse to answer my question by stating what sort of method you suggest to take care of people who cannot or do not have any 'economic value'. So basically you're just punting the ball and saying "Yeah well they'll obviously get taken care of!" So because I pointed out the obvious fact that some people don't produce economic value I have to answer to you on the subject of whether poor people should be left to starve? Sorry but I feel zero motivation to type anything on that subject in this context and this cuts right back to my point that it's some people here arguing from the left that are having trouble disassociating economic value with moral worth. You jumping from my statements to those questions is exactly that. VitalSigns posted:Wait wait, where does an inflationary effect come from? It can't be from raising prices to cover the costs, because I thought prices were set at the intersection of supply and demand such that if manufacturers raised prices, the loss in sales would outweight the increased profit margin on each item and profits would fall (likewise lowering prices below market price would not cause a big enough rise in volume to make up for the price decreease). If a manufacturer could raise its prices and still see increased profits despite a drop in sales, it would already be doing that now even without a minimum wage hike. The company would have to take the cost from profits, and only if the extra costs made weaker competitors insolvent could the company finally raise prices in response to the supply constriction of its competitors going out of business. You're arguing that costs don't factor into prices? You're making a glaring mistake. Where a particular business can set it's prices is determined by its cost structure and its competitors cost structure. If costs go up for everyone then everyone can raise and will raise prices. That's how costs work. If costs were detached from pricing the economy wouldn't work. At all.
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Oct 1, 2014 23:52
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Have to buy $700 a month psoriasis cream that your insurance won't cover? DRO won't help you work out a deal with them because they're colluding? Guess you should have thought about that before you got strep throat when you were 4! Don't tread on me with your weird rear end skin.
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Oct 1, 2014 23:56
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asdf32 posted:You're arguing that costs don't factor into prices? You're making a glaring mistake. This is the Econ 1-est post. Do costs factor into prices? Yes. Does it follow that raising some costs by a set amount would lead to a rise in the price of goods and/or services? No. Try to explain, using your simplistic input-output model, how stores like Costco or Trader Joe's can possibly function, when those stores both pay high wages and sell goods at very competitive prices.
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Oct 2, 2014 00:03
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asdf32 posted:So because I pointed out the obvious fact that some people don't produce economic value I have to answer to you on the subject of whether poor people should be left to starve?
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Oct 2, 2014 00:05
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| # ? May 15, 2024 18:00 |
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AlternateAccount posted:So what do you think would happen to the 95%+ of earners who are paid more than minimum wage if the law were repealed tomorrow? And as for the shady science all around of minimum wage effects, you can find a study to basically say just about anything about how it will affect the economy. Skipping any of the common argument that a higher minimum wage will decrease the available number of jobs(which is fairly universally believed, but considered a necessary evil,) do you think it will have an inflationary effect? I'm basically with you here. Studies have mostly been a mixed bag with basically no studies demonstrating a significantly positive or negative effect. Though one issue is that studies are typically fairly short term and typically on fairly small minimum wage increases. They don't extrapolate that well to telling us the long term impact of large minimum wage increases. quote:Tying taxation to services provided primarily benefits in keeping the cash where it's meant to go, offering some degree of compartmentalization. As much as I hate the word used to justify anything, is it appropriate to say that taxation that more directly funds the government actions that create the utilized service is inherently more fair? And what's wrong with a transfer payment? This is a point where I'll note that the "size" of government and taxation rates are two different things. I consider the government big when it's employing lots of people and directly making lots of decisions. Transfer payments don't involve that. Government could institute a 100% tax, redistribute all 100% and could still be quite small. That aside, in this particular case what's the problem? This isn't even a class wealth transfer which takes money from person A and gives it to person B, it's a time shift. I pay money now and (in theory) get it back later when I probably need it more. In practice you do want old people to be able to sustain themselves in a period of time when they probably won't want or be able to work right? In theory, telling people to save for retirement themselves is ok. But it utterly falls flat in practice. We need only look at 401k participation and contribution rates to see that a whole generation of people are basically screwed for retirement. This is a clear case in my mind of a perfectly ok theory (economic freedom!) falling utterly flat in practice. Social security is a great solution.
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Oct 2, 2014 00:09
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