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Mr Interweb posted:Okay three things someone clarify for me: 1) If a currency is backed by gold, or some other real life thing, then the money supply is limited by that thing. The government can't just print more of it if it wants too. If the government prints money it provides another way for the government to spend money in the economy. Either the government collects taxes to spend, or it prints money and spends it. Either way allows the government to consume a portion of the economic pie at the expense of citizens and generally increase its economic power. The financial details are a bit more complicated, but that's all basically sound. My point from earlier is "who cares". If the government already has the ability to take my money through taxes, it's hard to get alarmed by its ability to take my money through inflation. The net result in both cases is the same.
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Oct 3, 2014 01:02
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AlternateAccount posted:Holy poo poo, catching up on this thread is getting painful. I am just going to pull out the worst bullshit I saw: Okay, couple of things that I'll have to touch on here. Mostly because you don't understand some basic concepts. First off, yes, the elderly have a higher net worth than the young on average. This is not something unique to this generation, or really any generation. Part of it is simply the fact that as you get older you own more things, but the primary cause of that disparity is owning your home. Elderly people will pretty much always have a higher net worth on average because they've had 30 years or more to pay down their mortgage. They aren't sitting on $150,000, that is the value of their home and/or their life savings/retirement income. quote:Additionally, You know what is counted as income for that number you have quoted in there? Social loving Security! You either know this because you read it and are trying to lie about it, or you cribbed a stat and didn't bother to read the rest of the goddamned page before you came here to say how "bullshit" my claim was. Well here are some other choice quotes from the same source: SSA.gov, the exact source of your quote posted:Social Security benefits are especially important in providing economic security to the elderly. In 2008, nearly 9 out of 10 aged units recieved Social Security benefits. Social Security provided at least half of the total income for the majority of beneficiary aged units in 2008. Without Social Security, the majority of the aged units would have been exposed to great economic insecurity. Median income is $25,000. 9/10 elderly used social security in 2008. The majority of those received at least half of their total income from Social Security. Without it their income would have been no more than $12,500. The federal poverty line for a family of two is $15,000. So how exactly am I wrong in saying that without Social Security at least half our elderly would be in poverty? Go on, explain it. I'll wait. SSA.gov posted:Social Security is the major source of income for most of the elderly. Do you think the 47% of unmarried seniors might have to run out and buy cat food when they suddenly lose 90% of their income? Or do you think they should literally sell everything they own in an attempt to keep afloat a few more years before having pretty much zero income? quote:If you want to work up something a bit more targeted to low-income elderly, maybe that's fine, but consider that at the moment it acts functionally as a transfer payment from working individuals who typically have a lower net worth and not necessarily substantially higher income to the elderly. This is exactly how social security has worked for 80 years. Current benefits are paid by existing workers, who will have their benefits paid out by future workers and so forth. The only way this could conceivably be a problem is if you see a point down the line where the US does not have new workers. But in that case I suspect we'd have bigger loving problems to do with not having given birth to children for several generations. BONUS ROUND: AlternateAccount posted:The average social security recipient receives substantially more, as in six figures more, in payouts than payins. This depends on what generation you are talking about. People who retired in the early years of Social Security got a hell of a lot more bang for their buck because they got full benefits despite not having paid in for their entire lifetimes. More modern retiree's don't have this happen since they have been paying into Medicare and SS for their lifetimes, and they can expect to get back a slightly higher amount than they paid in taxes. That said, the difference between benefits received and taxes paid is covered entirely by gains made through investment by the Social Security trust fund. Caros fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Oct 3, 2014 |
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Oct 3, 2014 01:10
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StandardVC10 posted:1 - Paper currency on the gold standard is nominally redeemable for gold. If you issue more currency in paper than you have gold, there's a problem. Someone better informed than me at the moment can probably elucidate. When did the U.S. start using paper currency?
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Oct 3, 2014 01:29
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Mr Interweb posted:When did the U.S. start using paper currency? During the Civil War would be a prominent example, I don't think it was the first usage of paper currency in the country though.
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Oct 3, 2014 01:36
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Mr Interweb posted:When did the U.S. start using paper currency? 1775... kinda. The US used Continental Currency in 1775, though it quickly poo poo the bed due to overprinting and being backed by a government with no history and no 'standard'. They tried again in 1785 they issued the US dollar backed by silver, which had a troubled hitory as well. They followed it up with the silver dollar and associated coinage in 1792 and so on and so forth. The dollar as we know it came into being with the federal reserve, but there were a lot of attempts beforehand. Moreover the US had a ton of competing currencies during its time other than government backed currency. Fun fact, the Gold Standard of the US didn't solidify until 1900 and lasted only until 1933. Before 1900 the US was either silver or bimetal. As an additional fun fact, the reason the US switched from silver to gold is because they found a large amount of silver as they went west and it basically tanked the price of the silver in US coinage. Which is one of the many reasons that using metallic backed currency is loving retarded. Caros fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Oct 3, 2014 |
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Oct 3, 2014 01:37
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StandardVC10 posted:During the Civil War would be a prominent example, I don't think it was the first usage of paper currency in the country though. Continental scrip during the revolution would probably be the first thing that counted, from a distance in a bad light, as a national paper currency. If you want earlier than that, I think some colonies had limited banknote usage from time to time, though never in an interchangeable way and always less preferred than British pounds sterling.
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Oct 3, 2014 01:38
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Caros posted:Fun fact, the Gold Standard of the US didn't solidify until 1900 and lasted only until 1933. Before 1900 the US was either silver or bimetal. As an additional fun fact, the reason the US switched from silver to gold is because they found a large amount of silver as they went west and it basically tanked the price of the silver in US coinage. Which is one of the many reasons that using metallic backed currency is loving retarded. In some dystopian future, Libertopian States fight some kind of space battle to prevent the exploitation of near-Earth asteroids by filthy Statists, and the tanking of their precious gold market by a sudden massive influx of SPACE GOLD.
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Oct 3, 2014 01:45
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Rhjamiz posted:In some dystopian future, Libertopian States fight some kind of space battle to prevent the exploitation of near-Earth asteroids by filthy Statists, and the tanking of their precious gold market by a sudden massive influx of SPACE GOLD. Mobile Suit Galt If only everyone could understand one another, and also the Non-Aggression Principle, there would never be any war! Ayn Rand makes an appearance as the Cyber-Newtype lunatic only to be shot by Stefan Molyneux who calls her a stupid oval office for getting in the way of a man's duty to freedom. ... I might actually watch that, I'm not gonna lie.
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Oct 3, 2014 01:52
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StandardVC10 posted:During the Civil War would be a prominent example, I don't think it was the first usage of paper currency in the country though. Caros posted:1775... kinda. Okay this is interesting. I admit, I had a rather different idea of what the gold standard folk were suggesting when they keep saying we need to go back to that. So are Jrode and people like him honestly suggesting that we start going back to a time when everyone carried gold coins and poo poo?
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Oct 3, 2014 01:52
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asdf32 posted:Why is fiat currency so important given that government already has the power and willingness to tax directly? You are completely wrong about this. As a libertarian, I would support direct taxation at high rates over printing money. Every single time. When a government has the ability to monetize the debt, it is not clear to the average person what is happening. Rising prices don't occur right away and inflation doesn't affect everyone equally. It impoverishes certain segments of society slowly and sneakily while enriching other segments. It allows an expansion of the State far beyond what anyone would tolerate if they actually had to directly pay taxes to fund the enterprise. Short of ending the Federal Reserve and going back on the gold standard, it would be a great first step to pass a Constitutional amendment or law that would make it expressly illegal to monetize the debt or expand credit except in an emergency situation. The effect of such a law (provided it could actually be enforced) would be to force the government to raise taxes on everyone to fund the current levels of spending. People would rebel and even previous supporters of expansive State power would favor a significant reduction in spending and the elimination of whole departments and programs. Once you get rid of the smokescreen of "free" money to paper over deficits, people actually come to grips with the genuine cost of these programs. The illusion is shattered and large scale efforts to push back against the State gain much more traction.
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Oct 3, 2014 01:56
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wateroverfire posted:On the RF issue, is there any benefit to throwing a signal out there that is just going to be interfered with by another signal? If not an industry group could maybe create some standards and help new entrants slot into the existing structure so that everything can keep operating. There are all sorts of potential benefits for an enterprising captain of industry to interfere with RF signals. For instance, maybe I build a huge broadcast tower on MY PROPERTY and I only turn it on if the local communities don't pay me X gold bars per month. Failure to comply and I just randomly broadcast the John Galt speech over your baby monitor. Or maybe I'm a salesman and I want to randomly inundate the surrounding neighborhood with radio ads at my whim, interrupting normal broadcasts in the process. And these ideas wouldn't just apply to your car radio, I could interrupt cell phone calls, WiFi, whatever the gently caress I want. I just have a physics education and these ideas are off the top of my head; people really committed to taking advantage of the radio spectrum could probably come up with all sorts of great ideas.
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Oct 3, 2014 01:56
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Mr Interweb posted:Okay this is interesting. I admit, I had a rather different idea of what the gold standard folk were suggesting when they keep saying we need to go back to that. So are Jrode and people like him honestly suggesting that we start going back to a time when everyone carried gold coins and poo poo? Well no, that isn't exactly right. The gold standard basically works like this: In the way olden days people would drop their money off at a bank. Then later they'd come back and get it so as to not have gold sitting around, while the banks in turn loaned out that money to gain interest and make their money. Eventually people got sick of having to go to the bank, pick up their money, cart it off to someone else and so forth (cuz gold is heavy) so the banks started issuing paper receipts that said "We will give x amount of gold to the bearer of this note." Banks that held these dollars also did was is called 'fractional reserve lending' the general idea being that so long as people weren't all coming back at once, they didn't actually need to hold all of the money in the bank. They could keep 10%, loan out the other 90% and still be able to meet the day to day requests for gold unless things went totally tits up, because most people were just happy exchanging the notes of credit. This however was hugely vulnerable to the idea that if people lost faith in the bank, they'd all rush to be the one to get their gold out or else they be left with worthless paper. That system is what evolved into what is called the gold standard. The USD is called a federal reserve note, and back in the day you it said on the bottom "Will pay to the bearer on demand One Dollar" where a dollar was defined as a specific amount of gold. The idea was that you could physically take this bill down to the federal reserve and straight up exchange it for a fixed amount of gold if you wanted to, and that promise to give you gold was what gave the money its value. The problem with this is, that it heavily constrains the ability of the government to do anything with the money supply. If you only have say... fifty million 'dollars' worth of gold, you can only have fifty million dollars in circulation... you can't decide to start up a jobs program because you couldn't physically pay for it without raising taxes. In the depression FDR wisely said 'gently caress that noise' and took the US off the gold standard. This meant he could print dollars, and so long as people trusted that the money had inherent value as currency, that is, that it was backed by the US government, they'd keep using it. And that is where we are today, with a Fiat currency backed by nothing but the faith that the US government will always repay its debts, which it always has/will.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:03
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asdf32 posted:1) If a currency is backed by gold, or some other real life thing, then the money supply is limited by that thing. The government can't just print more of it if it wants too. quote:My point from earlier is "who cares". If the government already has the ability to take my money through taxes, it's hard to get alarmed by its ability to take my money through inflation. The net result in both cases is the same. It makes a big difference if someone just has income and little savings (or none, or just debt) versus sitting on huge piles of money.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:07
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jrodefeld posted:You are completely wrong about this. As a libertarian, I would support direct taxation at high rates over printing money. Every single time. When a government has the ability to monetize the debt, it is not clear to the average person what is happening. Rising prices don't occur right away (Or necessarily at all) and inflation doesn't affect everyone equally (It hits the rich far more). It impoverishes certain segments of society slowly and sneakily (The wealthy) while enriching other segments (The Poor, also not necessarily). I'm just going to start doing this, because its pretty fun.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:09
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jrodefeld posted:You are completely wrong about this. As a libertarian, I would support direct taxation at high rates over printing money. Every single time. When a government has the ability to monetize the debt, it is not clear to the average person what is happening. Rising prices don't occur right away and inflation doesn't affect everyone equally. It impoverishes certain segments of society slowly and sneakily while enriching other segments. First on the chopping block of programs that would be cut is Welfare. Millions fall into even worse poverty. Food-stamps go too, despite being probably the single best use of government dollars in terms of economic stimulation, and millions go hungry while the economy is weakened by the loss. Education gets gutted as well, because conservatives love to gut education, and you can kiss the Postal Service goodbye. Frivolous research (all of it) is also cut because why are we spending all of our money in space instead of fixing the problems down here (nevermind that we just gutted the welfare programs so we aren't even doing that)? Why the gently caress would I want to live in that hellish future?
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Oct 3, 2014 02:10
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asdf32 posted:You're arguing that costs don't factor into prices? You're making a glaring mistake. You're the one quoting econ-101 supply and demand curves to claim that what an unskilled worker accepts in pay is what his labor is worth and that there's no way the threat of imminent starvation for his entire family could possibly have any effect on negotiations whatsoever. So please, explain this glaring mistake without abandoning the premise that supply and demand set prices, end of story. Because according to econ101, a business can't raise prices in response to fixed costs. For a fast food restaurant for example, sweeping the floor, manning the registers, cooking the food, all that takes a certain amount of time and people have to be paid to do it. If the costs of those things doubled tomorrow, McDonald's can't make up that money by raising their prices, because that would mean raising their prices increases their gross revenue and if that's the case they'd have done it already. The only way that works is if they raise them so much that demand starts dropping off enough for them to be able to cut staff (decreasing their marginal costs). If increasing Big Mac prices by a quarter doesn't actually reduce the lunch rush enough for me to schedule fewer cooks, then McDonald's can't increase profits by raising them. If I'm making widgets for $9 and selling them for $10 and the price of materials goes up so now widgets cost $11 to make, then yes I can raise prices to $12 because it's better to sell a smaller number of widgets at a $1 profit than a greater number at a $1 loss (but I'll still be making less profit than before the price increase). But if my fixed costs go up because my rent increases, or the government makes me buy a fire suppression system, or the wage of my security guard doubles, I can't pass that cost on in higher prices because prices are already set for maximum profit at the marginal cost of production. For any worker whose pay is a fixed cost, you can't raise prices. You have to cut production and cut back on staff to make it possible to realize greater profit from increased prices. "But VitalSigns", you say, "the world is more complicated than econ101, people aren't perfectly rational, etc" Yeah, you're drat right it is. Funny how econ101 is good enough for you when it's justifying loving over the poor, but you abandon it when its simplistic predictions are inconvenient for your ideology.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:10
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Rockopolis posted:Something that pops up in discussions of Gavelkind succession (bane of Crusader Kings players), the hilarity of the Holy Roman Empire, and other bits of the feudal system was they they really didn't see it as 'government' or a state per say, but more like private property and contractual obligations. Lots and lots of contractual obligations. That's why Gavelkind is a thing; it's not breaking up a country on the death of a king, it's distributing your estate out to your sons, like private property. Of course. Hoppe would probably say that the HRE was itself libertarian, or at any rate preferable to democracy, as the weaker and less sensible peoples of Europe gravitated towards placing their trust in a natural master. Comely wives and fertile lands likewise gravitated to the emperor. quote:If so, then are modern states then libertarian, if they're the holders of all fiefs? With an elective system of inheritance, of course. It'd make taxes either rents or vassalage, I think? Nooooooooo. How absurd that is. You see, this guy wrote an article disclaiming this, and he is very well-respected by all the people who attend the same key parties and nut into each other's bearded mouths while listening to spoken word LPs of Ronald Reagan. And he thinks that's absurd. How could states be the heirs of powerful property owners? A state is like a flat thing, a property owner has legs and a penis.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:13
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jrodefeld posted:You are completely wrong about this. As a libertarian, I would support direct taxation at high rates over printing money. Every single time. When a government has the ability to monetize the debt, it is not clear to the average person what is happening. Rising prices don't occur right away and inflation doesn't affect everyone equally. It impoverishes certain segments of society slowly and sneakily while enriching other segments. Serious question: what, in your eyes, makes inflation such a good scam? Your whole worldview is predicated on a remarkable belief in people as rational actors resistant to wholesale manipulation, yet fiat currency has somehow made suckers of the vast, vast majority of the population (inasmuch as your position is the tiny, tiny minority).
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Oct 3, 2014 02:18
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Mr Interweb posted:Okay three things someone clarify for me: I'm using the terms "paper money" and "fiat money" interchangeably. Maybe I should be more careful of my use of language in this context. I'm opposed to a State monopoly control of currency first and foremost and, second, I am in support of commodity money that emerges on the market because the people choose it voluntarily (i.e. it has intrinsic value of some sort). Mr Interweb posted:2) Does he think that the Gilded Age was in fact an extremely pleasant and wonderful time for those in poverty, and that he thinks all the negative stuff you hear about it is cause of evil liberal history professors? I think, in comparison to today, that those living in poverty or in the middle class had it extremely rough in the so-called "gilded" age. However it cannot be disputed that the economic progress and expansion of prosperity that resulted from the Industrial Revolution helped all members of society, who lived in greater comfort among greater abundance of goods and services every decade until the beginning of the Progressive Era. You are erroneously comparing living conditions for people who lived in a rudimentary developing economy of less than 50 million people with a highly advanced industrial economy comprised of more than 320 million people a century and a half later. You have to judge living standards by the standards of the era. If you were a working class person in 1900, where on earth would you rather live than in the United States? Why were so many immigrants coming to America before the welfare state and government social services were created? There is not perfect era that reflects an idealized market economy, but I believe without a doubt that the popular understanding of that period in our history is tainted with propaganda from people who have a great incentive to make you terrified of what would happen if the State did not exist. Honestly what else would you expect State-run "schools" to teach? Naturally the State will teach people how indispensable they are to the development of society and how horrific life without them was. Mr Interweb posted:
Ronald Reagan was a horrible president, one of our worst ever. He was possibly senile, a gullible actor who would dutifully read his lines and stay out of the way while George H.W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, among other establishment hacks actually ran his administration. Any pretext that Reagan was an opponent of "big government" was a ludicrous lie. He was someone who could speak to the conservative base while allowing the State to grow far more powerful as a result. The War on Drugs was ramped up dramatically. Reagan's administration literally waged war on inner city neighborhoods terrorizing people, sending SWAT teams into peoples houses, perpetuating the crack epidemic and police brutality of the time. The national debt quadrupled. I honestly don't know a single thing that there is to complement Reagan on. Truly a horrible president. One of the absolute worst legacies, however, was that because of some of his empty rhetoric people still think he represented "limited" government and the free market! I still hear this nonsense, "we tried your free market idea under Ronald Reagan and look at the results!" Bullshit. If you look at actions and not words, Reagan was as big government as they come, he supported the government getting involved in your bedroom, regulating your personal habits. The conservative coalitions that were formed in the 1980s, including the "moral majority" crowd and the neocon warmongers ended up doing unimaginable harm to our national security and our country. They brought their perverse ideological views to fruition under the George W. Bush administration. Can I make any more clear my disgust with the Reagan Administration and the conservative coalitions he helped to create?
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Oct 3, 2014 02:20
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Wait, is government printing money the problem or is debt the problem, they seem kind of mutually exclusive.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:23
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jrodefeld posted:You are completely wrong about this. As a libertarian, I would support direct taxation at high rates over printing money. Every single time. When a government has the ability to monetize the debt, it is not clear to the average person what is happening. Rising prices don't occur right away and inflation doesn't affect everyone equally. It impoverishes certain segments of society slowly and sneakily while enriching other segments. People are highly aware of inflation. Printing currency is a more complicated way to fund government in some respects, but it's wrong to suggest it goes unnoticed. Taxes also don't effect everyone equally. Secondly there have been times in U.S. history where tax rates of 90+ percent were on the books and tolerated. Current tax rates + money printing don't approach that now. quote:Short of ending the Federal Reserve and going back on the gold standard, it would be a great first step to pass a Constitutional amendment or law that would make it expressly illegal to monetize the debt or expand credit except in an emergency situation. The effect of such a law (provided it could actually be enforced) would be to force the government to raise taxes on everyone to fund the current levels of spending. People would rebel and even previous supporters of expansive State power would favor a significant reduction in spending and the elimination of whole departments and programs. People know how big their states are, no one in France thinks they really have a small government because they're being fooled by tricky French monetary policy. That said I'd rather you respond to my posts on rights or the survivability of anarchist societies in the face of emergent and aggressive states.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:23
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Hey jrodefeld let's get your opinion on some other presidents. What about ehhhhhh THOMAS JEFFERSON? Does writing the Declaration of Independence balance out slave rapin'? Or do you think slaves can consent to sex and he simply kept his 15-year-old concubine and her children enslaved because their time preference was all hosed up and they would have ended up destitute without his firm hand and erect, fatherly penis? e: jrodefeld posted:There is not perfect era that reflects an idealized market economy, but I believe without a doubt that the popular understanding of that period in our history is tainted with propaganda from people who have a great incentive to make you terrified of what would happen if the State did not exist. Honestly what else would you expect State-run "schools" to teach? Naturally the State will teach people how indispensable they are to the development of society and how horrific life without them was. This is one humdinger of a conspiracy theory jrodefeld. Don't you have enough private schools by now to have spread the true gospel of markets and outcompeted socialist lies with the power of truth? woke wedding drone fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Oct 3, 2014 |
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Oct 3, 2014 02:25
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jrodefeld posted:I'm opposed to a State monopoly control of currency first and foremost and, second, I am in support of commodity money that emerges on the market because the people choose it voluntarily Having competing currencies would make lots of basic transactions a complete pain in the rear end.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:30
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VitalSigns posted:You're the one quoting econ-101 supply and demand curves to claim that what an unskilled worker accepts in pay is what his labor is worth and that there's no way the threat of imminent starvation for his entire family could possibly have any effect on negotiations whatsoever. So please, explain this glaring mistake without abandoning the premise that supply and demand set prices, end of story. Yep the bold is how it works. quote:If I'm making widgets for $9 and selling them for $10 and the price of materials goes up so now widgets cost $11 to make, then yes I can raise prices to $12 because it's better to sell a smaller number of widgets at a $1 profit than a greater number at a $1 loss (but I'll still be making less profit than before the price increase). Yep great example. quote:But if my fixed costs go up because my rent increases, or the government makes me buy a fire suppression system, or the wage of my security guard doubles, I can't pass that cost on in higher prices because prices are already set for maximum profit at the marginal cost of production. Oh whoops! You seem to think that the category of cost matters. It doesn't. Dollars spent on materials are identical to dollars spent on fire extinguishers, rent and labor. Prices have to be set at an amount that leaves a profit after paying all of these things. You're right that prices are what they are because if they were higher demand would go down. But if the cost structure changes accepting that lower demand may very well be the most profitable option. quote:For any worker whose pay is a fixed cost, you can't raise prices. You have to cut production and cut back on staff to make it possible to realize greater profit from increased prices. Or crying "ECON 101" is a thing you can do anytime an economic argument gets made that doesn't line up with your ideology. Amusing that you actually understand the individual pieces of the theory here, you just refuse to finish the puzzle because you don't happen to like the picture that it makes. spoon0042 posted:Wait, is government printing money the problem or is debt the problem, they seem kind of mutually exclusive. They're related because the government can pay debt by printing money. Or just by generally causing inflation it can make the real value of past debts significantly lower. For example most people who lend the government a car's worth of money today are doing it because they expect a car's worth of money back in a few years (and maybe some profit, a TV or so). But if government policy increases inflation by the time it pays back the agreed upon number of dollars those dollars might be worth significantly less than a car. That difference is profit for the government. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Oct 3, 2014 |
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Oct 3, 2014 02:36
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StandardVC10 posted:Having competing currencies would make lots of basic transactions a complete pain in the rear end. Oh it absolutely did. The age of 'free banking' was a loving gong show.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:37
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Caros posted:Well no, that isn't exactly right. Right, that's what I originally thought beforehand, but Jrode's comments about paper money threw me off. I couldn't tell if he was against paper currency in the absence of a gold standard, or if he was against paper money in general. edit: Okay, he's using "paper money" interchangeably with "fiat money". Makes more sense now.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:37
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StandardVC10 posted:Having competing currencies would make lots of basic transactions a complete pain in the rear end. Once virtual currencies inevitably take over we'll just need poorly coded websites to swap bitcoins for dogecoins. Easy!
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Oct 3, 2014 02:39
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SedanChair posted:This is one humdinger of a conspiracy theory jrodefeld. Don't you have enough private schools by now to have spread the true gospel of markets and outcompeted socialist lies with the power of truth? Oh man I totally would have missed the scare quotes on "schools." Never stop posting, jrod. asdf32 posted:Oh whoops! You seem to think that the category of cost matters. It doesn't. Dollars spent on materials are identical to dollars spent on fire extinguishers, rent and labor. Prices have to be set at an amount that leaves a profit after paying all of these things. None of this implies what you seem to think it implies, i.e., asdf32 posted: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.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:46
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Caros posted:Oh it absolutely did. The age of 'free banking' was a loving gong show. But that was before industrialization so it wasn't real 
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Oct 3, 2014 02:47
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jrodefeld posted:I think, in comparison to today, that those living in poverty or in the middle class had it extremely rough in the so-called "gilded" age. However it cannot be disputed that the economic progress and expansion of prosperity that resulted from the Industrial Revolution helped all members of society, who lived in greater comfort among greater abundance of goods and services every decade until the beginning of the Progressive Era. Nice touch on the scare quotes there. quote:Ronald Reagan was a horrible president Okay, but what about his tax cuts and de-regulation initiatives?
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Oct 3, 2014 02:55
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asdf32 posted:You're right that prices are what they are because if they were higher demand would go down. But if the cost structure changes accepting that lower demand may very well be the most profitable option. Not if the drop in demand doesn't reduce costs. A drop in demand doesn't change the amount of time it takes to drive a floor waxer around Wal-Mart. A drop in demand doesn't change the number of nighttime hours during which I pay the night watchman. Labor isn't infinitely divisible like other commodities: if I raise my prices and the lunch rush drops off 10%, that doesn't mean I can drop from 3 cooks to 2. And even for those workers I can cut, that makes the fixed costs a larger percentage of my expenses; there may not be a solution in which lowered demand can let me save enough costs for the price increase to actually make me more profitable. Eating the cost in reduced profits may be the most profitable option. asdf32 posted:Prices have to be set at an amount that leaves a profit after paying all of these things. So if the price for a certain good wasn't covering the costs in fuel, maintenance, machinery, rent, and everything else yet millions and millions of these businesses continued to operate at a loss for years or even centuries, would you say that something in the market for this particular good is broken, and that it's failing in some way not predicted by your model? That maybe the market for this product operates in a fundamentally different way than much easier to understand markets for things like dolls and chocolate bars? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Oct 3, 2014 |
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Oct 3, 2014 03:13
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DarklyDreaming posted:But that was before industrialization so it wasn't real I assure you that the mid 1800's were not before industrialization.
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Oct 3, 2014 03:30
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VitalSigns posted:Not if the drop in demand doesn't reduce costs. A drop in demand doesn't change the amount of time it takes to drive a floor waxer around Wal-Mart. A drop in demand doesn't change the number of nighttime hours during which I pay the night watchman. Labor isn't infinitely divisible like other commodities: if I raise my prices and the lunch rush drops off 10%, that doesn't mean I can drop from 3 cooks to 2. And even for those workers I can cut, that makes the fixed costs a larger percentage of my expenses; there may not be a solution in which lowered demand can let me save enough costs for the price increase to actually make me more profitable. Eating the cost in reduced profits may be the most profitable option. Your sliding in some short term versus long terms differences without acknowledging it. In the short term you can't immediately reduce fixed costs (though you do have options). But over the long term you can do whatever you want - things like relocate the factory to a smaller location, close stores, cut worker hours etc. Minimum wage increases are long term policy and there is plenty of time for the effects to play out. And yes you can drop from 3 to 2 workers in the if you only just barely needed the 3rd worker and the 10% drop puts you on the other side of that line. quote:So if the price for a certain good wasn't covering the costs in fuel, maintenance, machinery, rent, and everything else yet millions and millions of these businesses continued to operate at a loss for years or even centuries, would you say that something in the market for this particular good is broken, and that it's failing in some way not predicted by your model? That maybe the market for this product operates in a fundamentally different way than much easier to understand markets for things like dolls and chocolate bars? Haha. This argument plays on the assumption that economics follow from morality. It doesn't.
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Oct 3, 2014 03:41
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Caros posted:I assure you that the mid 1800's were not before industrialization. It's been my impression that, without meaning DarklyDreaming any insult (yet, at least), a lot of people conflate the 2nd Industrial Revolution in America (post-Civil War manufacturing leading into Gilded Age stuff) with all of it, and ignore the 1st altogether.
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Oct 3, 2014 03:41
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Captain_Maclaine posted:It's been my impression that, without meaning DarklyDreaming any insult (yet, at least), a lot of people conflate the 2nd Industrial Revolution in America (post-Civil War manufacturing leading into Gilded Age stuff) with all of it, and ignore the 1st altogether. Good point. Didn't mean any offense by it, just thought it was funny.
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Oct 3, 2014 03:45
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Caros posted:Good point. Didn't mean any offense by it, just thought it was funny. The joke was Jrod's goalpost shifting when history is brought up, probably should have named something later like the internet or tablet devices.
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Oct 3, 2014 03:54
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Oh also since we were discussing it a page or two back, I don't get how right-wingers argue that FDR's policies somehow made the Depression worse. As time went on, he continually raised both taxes and spending. If the supply siders were correct, then with every tax and spending hike, the unemployment should have kept shooting up, yet the exact opposite happened. Just to reiterate, we had a 90%+ top tax rates with record spending by the time WWII came around. Doing those things should have plunged us into an economic black hole, the result of which would have made the Great Depression look like the Roaring 20s.
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Oct 3, 2014 04:03
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SedanChair posted:Hey jrodefeld let's get your opinion on some other presidents. What about ehhhhhh THOMAS JEFFERSON? Does writing the Declaration of Independence balance out slave rapin'? Or do you think slaves can consent to sex and he simply kept his 15-year-old concubine and her children enslaved because their time preference was all hosed up and they would have ended up destitute without his firm hand and erect, fatherly penis? This kind of response is not helpful to discussion at all, and you do it constantly. If you want to circlejerk and shitpost, go to r/enoughlibertarianspam or something.
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Oct 3, 2014 04:05
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Another Great Depression fun fact: the gold standard made it harder to exit the Great Depression hence the mass exodus from the standard in the early 1930s.
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Oct 3, 2014 04:12
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Mr Interweb posted:Oh also since we were discussing it a page or two back, I don't get how right-wingers argue that FDR's policies somehow made the Depression worse. As time went on, he continually raised both taxes and spending. If the supply siders were correct, then with every tax and spending hike, the unemployment should have kept shooting up, yet the exact opposite happened. Just to reiterate, we had a 90%+ top tax rates with record spending by the time WWII came around. Doing those things should have plunged us into an economic black hole, the result of which would have made the Great Depression look like the Roaring 20s. Well don't let logic stop you first of all. The last time Jrodefeld and I talked he suggested that FDR's policy was just a continuation of Hoover which is so out there that it makes my head hurt just thinking about it. The fact is that this is all pretty easily proven false. FDR's policy on the whole brought an end to the great depression, I mean its no real surprise that when a president gets into office and enacts sweeping changes to help the economy recover, the economy tends to recover. I'm sure Jrod will come in with his Post hoc ergo propter hoc, but multiple generations of scholarship on the issue suggest that in this case the correlation did in fact have a lot to do with the causation. Raskolnikov38 posted:Another Great Depression fun fact: the gold standard made it harder to exit the Great Depression hence the mass exodus from the standard in the early 1930s. You want a fun fact? The year a country left the gold standard directly correlated with the year it exited the great depression. That is to say, the earlier a country said 'gently caress this gold standard bullshit, lets fix our economy' the sooner said country had its economy fixed. Who'd have thunk it?
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Oct 3, 2014 04:15
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