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Nintendo Kid posted:If I'm a lobbying agency, my response to this would be to have friendly talks with Bob Senator's wife Barbara and his college age son Jim and maybe they'll just happen to bring up my discussions with them to their husband/father. And their husband/dad will just happen to tell them things they tell back to me. I kind of get your point, that these things will happen, but I do think the legislature actually trying to, I don't know, police itself, would be a valuable gesture in creating a more legitimate government, and putting layers between legislators and lobbyists would probably help, anyways. Also, forcing clandestine folks to pass loving notes like that is much more publicly shady and more likely to lead to actual scandal. Personally, I don't think public officials in charge of making laws effecting literally millions of people deserve a private life anymore than a soldier in the field deserves to be able to quit whenever they want to. Private dealings on public matters fundamentally undermine effective government.
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Aug 12, 2014 23:03
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bobtheconqueror posted:I kind of get your point, that these things will happen, but I do think the legislature actually trying to, I don't know, police itself, would be a valuable gesture in creating a more legitimate government, and putting layers between legislators and lobbyists would probably help, anyways. Also, forcing clandestine folks to pass loving notes like that is much more publicly shady and more likely to lead to actual scandal. Personally, I don't think public officials in charge of making laws effecting literally millions of people deserve a private life anymore than a soldier in the field deserves to be able to quit whenever they want to. Private dealings on public matters fundamentally undermine effective government.
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Aug 12, 2014 23:05
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Nessus posted:At a certain point in this system, the actual government will probably be whatever party or parties are charged with the enforcement of the regulations on politicians. Like, the department of Justice? The FBI? Wouldn't they already be secretly in charge of the government?
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Aug 12, 2014 23:12
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bobtheconqueror posted:I kind of get your point, that these things will happen, but I do think the legislature actually trying to, I don't know, police itself, would be a valuable gesture in creating a more legitimate government, and putting layers between legislators and lobbyists would probably help, anyways. Also, forcing clandestine folks to pass loving notes like that is much more publicly shady and more likely to lead to actual scandal. Personally, I don't think public officials in charge of making laws effecting literally millions of people deserve a private life anymore than a soldier in the field deserves to be able to quit whenever they want to. Private dealings on public matters fundamentally undermine effective government. We've had those gestures for over a century, what have they got us? Can't we just admit that putting up with gestures isn't solving problems? Also I don't think the people standing to gain from being go-betweens would consider themselves forced to be them. Practically speaking, a lot of the people I mentioned are likely already doing that stuff now, because it's a simple way for lobbyists to keep direct connections covert.
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Aug 12, 2014 23:16
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bobtheconqueror posted:I kind of get your point, that these things will happen, but I do think the legislature actually trying to, I don't know, police itself, would be a valuable gesture in creating a more legitimate government, and putting layers between legislators and lobbyists would probably help, anyways. Also, forcing clandestine folks to pass loving notes like that is much more publicly shady and more likely to lead to actual scandal. Personally, I don't think public officials in charge of making laws effecting literally millions of people deserve a private life anymore than a soldier in the field deserves to be able to quit whenever they want to. Private dealings on public matters fundamentally undermine effective government. I left my office. I am still friends with people there, we go out for dinner, grab drinks, etc. We also talk, and being people who are politically interested, we talk politics. How do you tell the difference between friends talking about how they feel about an issue and (I don't lobby, but if I did) me lobbying my former office on an issue? That's how lobbying actually works. How do you deal with it? (When I said you literally have to ban having friends, this is what I meant.)
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Aug 12, 2014 23:21
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Nintendo Kid posted:We've had those gestures for over a century, what have they got us? Can't we just admit that putting up with gestures isn't solving problems? I don't think we do. The only accountability our lawmakers have is, well, if they commit an actual crime, they maybe will go to jail for it. Oh, and assuming you have an informed populace, you could vote the guy out of office. Putting an active barrier in place between politicians and lobbyists and making their actions more public helps create a political culture where backroom deals are unacceptable, rather than the norm, and I think that would be a valuable change. Also, if we're having to prioritize things, I've mentioned earlier that I'd be more for essential changes like campaign finance reform and improving the lot of the poor, thus limiting the effect of raw wealth on politics and enabling the poor to participate more effectively, creating a more democratic state than we have right now. Kalman posted:How do you deal with it? Make it public, such that whatever they talk about or try to bargain over is subject to media and public scrutiny. bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 23:27
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bobtheconqueror posted:I don't think we do. The only accountability our lawmakers have is, well, if they commit an actual crime, they maybe will go to jail for it. Oh, and assuming you have an informed populace, you could vote the guy out of office. Putting an active barrier in place between politicians and lobbyists and making their actions more public helps create a political culture where backroom deals are unacceptable, rather than the norm, and I think that would be a valuable change. You don't think campaign and lobbying laws that exist are gestures? Also it doesn't matter whether backroom deals are unacceptable - they're in back rooms precisely because they're unacceptable and most of the time no one's going to look nor are people going to investigate why Bob Senator made up his mind a certain way. We've campaign finance reformed multiple times and it turns out that it doesn't really work. And we can see that other countries that most people would consider to have much stricter campaign finance laws have tended to go in very similar ways to the US over the past few decades, which indicates that how campaigns are financed or even how representatives in a democracy are elected don't tend to prevent resulting governments from working with the people you seem to be opposed to them working with. You want to let the poor participate? Make it so people can vote for a full month or other things like that that actually allow the poor to participate. Get them things like guaranteed minimum incomes so they don't have to work 5 jobs or things like that just to get by, with no time to do politics. They don't have the money to buy in whether campaign donations are limited to $100 or $100000000000 because they can't really afford even $1. bobtheconqueror posted:Make it public, such that whatever they talk about or try to bargain over is subject to media and public scrutiny. How. How are you going to do this?
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Aug 12, 2014 23:34
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Nintendo Kid posted:You want to let the poor participate? Make it so people can vote for a full month or other things like that that actually allow the poor to participate. Get them things like guaranteed minimum incomes so they don't have to work 5 jobs or things like that just to get by, with no time to do politics. They don't have the money to buy in whether campaign donations are limited to $100 or $100000000000 because they can't really afford even $1. The point is that grinding poverty makes you indifferent to much other than being loving poor. Not being poor means you can start caring about poo poo and voting and participating. Also, the stuff you're talking about is what I meant by improving the lot of the poor. I didn't really mean to say that the poor should be giving their money to campaigns. Nintendo Kid posted:How. How are you going to do this? I don't know, man. We've been in pipe dream territory for a while here, since we're talking about trying to turn something like the US into a functional democracy without redoing the whole drat thing. That said, seems like we're moving more and more towards a society of ubiquitous surveillance anyways, so I don't think this is necessarily impossible.
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Aug 12, 2014 23:41
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bobtheconqueror posted:The point is that grinding poverty makes you indifferent to much other than being loving poor. Not being poor means you can start caring about poo poo and voting and participating. Also, the stuff you're talking about is what I meant by improving the lot of the poor. I didn't really mean to say that the poor should be giving their money to campaigns. You mentioned campaign finance reform as one of the things necessary - generally that deals with setting monetary limits. The answer is that you can't do it in any way that a government will ever agree to. You would literally need to isolate all government officials from everyone else, including their families, in order to ensure that no agreements happen outside the public eye. Even with oh-so-scary "universal surveillance" there's still people who control access to that surveillance, who themselves could be convinced to do things, maybe through intermediaries.. and so on. And even if you did manage to prevent all agreements from happening while they're in office, using some magical means - you certainly can't prevent any agreements from happening when they're a private citizen before election or even campaigning. Bob Senator could be paid off by say ExxonMobil while he's considering running in the first place on the condition he gives a little back to ExxonMobil during his time in office.
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Aug 12, 2014 23:46
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bobtheconqueror posted:Make it public, such that whatever they talk about or try to bargain over is subject to media and public scrutiny. Okay, so anyone who ever talks to a staffer about anything, that's now public? Does that include their families? Their friends? Them talking about their medical problems to their doctors? Them talking to their spouses about their relationship issues?
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Aug 12, 2014 23:46
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Nintendo Kid posted:You mentioned campaign finance reform as one of the things necessary - generally that deals with setting monetary limits. Okay. Forget the other stuff. We should do campaign finance reform, right? It would allow smaller, less well funded groups, to contribute meaningfully to political campaigns, weakening wealthy interests. We should ALSO help poor people not be so poor, so they can give a poo poo about politics without risking their livelihood in the process. Work both angles to maybe help things be more equal. These things are not necessarily related outside of their potential effect on relative political power. As for the legislator stuff. Ultimately, I don't think government officials deserve a right to privacy or personal freedom. I think that should be the cost of public office, in the same sense that you have to sacrifice your personal freedom if you want to serve in the military. I don't really have all the answers about what the limits should be or how to implement that sort of stuff. Sorry for entertaining an idea.
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Aug 12, 2014 23:58
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bobtheconqueror posted:Okay. Forget the other stuff. We should do campaign finance reform, right? It would allow smaller, less well funded groups, to contribute meaningfully to political campaigns, weakening wealthy interests. We should ALSO help poor people not be so poor, so they can give a poo poo about politics without risking their livelihood in the process. Work both angles to maybe help things be more equal. We already did campaign finance reform, multiple times in multiple ways. It turns out it doesn't accomplish anything? Surely you've paid attention to politics at least from 1970 to now? Do you not understand that wealthy groups are able to organize smaller groups to agree and pay for them? Do you think no one tried campaign finance reform before? Look the thing is that you can't just say "oh I was just entertaining an idea". The maximal loss of privacy you could come up with for officeholders still allows them to be easily influenced before taking office or even winning a primary, with no way to prevent that save removing all privacy for all people at all times.
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Aug 13, 2014 00:03
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Nintendo Kid posted:We already did campaign finance reform, multiple times in multiple ways. It turns out it doesn't accomplish anything? Surely you've paid attention to politics at least from 1970 to now? Do you not understand that wealthy groups are able to organize smaller groups to agree and pay for them? Do you think no one tried campaign finance reform before? We also just rolled back on it in the last couple years. We should at least fix that, right? Just because people murder despite it being illegal, doesn't mean we should give up and make it legal, right? Or theft, or any other lovely poo poo our society decided was wrong? Nintendo Kid posted:Look the thing is that you can't just say "oh I was just entertaining an idea". The maximal loss of privacy you could come up with for officeholders still allows them to be easily influenced before taking office or even winning a primary, with no way to prevent that save removing all privacy for all people at all times. You ever been wrong before? That's what I was. Maybe get less pissed about it.
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Aug 13, 2014 00:07
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bobtheconqueror posted:We also just rolled back on it in the last couple years. We should at least fix that, right? Just because people murder despite it being illegal, doesn't mean we should give up and make it legal, right? Or theft, or any other lovely poo poo our society decided was wrong? We "rolled it back" and nothing changed in politics from it, what does that tell you? Because see, people with money already knew how to fully get around all of it, using perfectly legal and even reasonable means. You came up with a dumb idea and tried to deflect criticism by "I was just coming up with dumb ideas". That doesn't really work.
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Aug 13, 2014 00:18
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Nintendo Kid posted:We "rolled it back" and nothing changed in politics from it, what does that tell you? Because see, people with money already knew how to fully get around all of it, using perfectly legal and even reasonable means. How did nothing change? I'm pretty sure campaigning has turned into a god damned free for all of super-pacs trying to influence things. I'd argue that without finance reform, there is simply no hope of not having both parties subjugated by wealthy interests. Just because wealthy people have a way around it, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to limit their influence. What would you propose instead? What can actually be done to fix this, since I'm apparently to stupid to actually have good ideas? Please keep in mind that I'm not saying finance reform will simply fix everything itself, I just don't see why we shouldn't do it. Nintendo Kid posted:You came up with a dumb idea and tried to deflect criticism by "I was just coming up with dumb ideas". That doesn't really work. How would you have me respond to being incorrect in a debate forum, other than to say I was incorrect? How is conceding the point deflecting criticism? bobtheconqueror fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Aug 13, 2014 |
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Aug 13, 2014 00:33
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bobtheconqueror posted:How did nothing change? I'm pretty sure campaigning has turned into a god damned free for all of super-pacs trying to influence things. I'd argue that without finance reform, there is simply no hope of not having both parties subjugated by wealthy interests. It's more that the "god damned free for all of super-pacs trying to influence things" isn't meaningfully different from the prior state of things in practice, I think. Yeah, lots of super PAC money out there, but it doesn't actually do very much except make the Koch brothers feel better about themselves and fund broadcast tv stations.
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Aug 13, 2014 00:35
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Kalman posted:It's more that the "god damned free for all of super-pacs trying to influence things" isn't meaningfully different from the prior state of things in practice, I think. Yeah, lots of super PAC money out there, but it doesn't actually do very much except make the Koch brothers feel better about themselves and fund broadcast tv stations. I'm pretty sure it means more money is being spent than before, which means a higher barrier of entry in that market, which means people with an actual interest in helping the poor that presumably get less money to throw around will have even less ability to influence things.
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Aug 13, 2014 00:41
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bobtheconqueror posted:How did nothing change? I'm pretty sure campaigning has turned into a god damned free for all of super-pacs trying to influence things. I'd argue that without finance reform, there is simply no hope of not having both parties subjugated by wealthy interests. Just because wealthy people have a way around it, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to limit their influence. We had those things before Citizens United, did you just start paying attention to politics after it happened? Who did you think was behind the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on campaigns prior to that ruling, small contributors? We made an attempt to limit the influence, it turned out that attempted method was utterly ineffective. Nothing was gained by making ExxonMobil shell out $2000 extra for some filing fees in Delaware or Nevada to easily get around any sort of limits, let alone the ways the media doesn't have a way to limit the free "political spending" they do by runnign programs about what the network and its sponsors support. I propose instead that the only thing that can actually limit the influence is to have there be less of a wealth disparity that can be leveraged - and that's going to be super hard to do. You were trying to use it as a defense and that's dumb. bobtheconqueror posted:I'm pretty sure it means more money is being spent than before, which means a higher barrier of entry in that market, which means people with an actual interest in helping the poor that presumably get less money to throw around will have even less ability to influence things. There is no higher barrier of entry. The barrier of entry was already far too high because media is a market and you already have to compete with Coca-Cola's advertising buys when you want to use it.
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Aug 13, 2014 00:42
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bobtheconqueror posted:I'm pretty sure it means more money is being spent than before, which means a higher barrier of entry in that market, which means people with an actual interest in helping the poor that presumably get less money to throw around will have even less ability to influence things. If the super PACs threw money into oil drums and burned it,they would also be consuming more money than before. (It would have nearly as much effect as what they actually do with it, too.)
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Aug 13, 2014 00:45
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Yeah. You guys are right there too. Oh well. Can't even get a minimum wage increase through congress, so we're probably screwed there as well.
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Aug 13, 2014 01:07
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Snipee posted:I haven't reread the Princeton paper on the influence of money in American politics since May, but from what I remember, one of the key reasons why it is so difficult to isolate the impact of money in decision-making behavior is because the public at large often share the same policy preferences as the elite. If we observe that both the rich and the poor want lower taxes in the US and that politicians later lowered taxes, then it is hard for us to discern if "democracy" "works". I fail to recall the methodology, but the conclusion was the obvious "money matters". If we tried to isolate for just the lowest 80% of the income brackets, then their opinions basically do not show any impact on legislation. But bear in mind that "approval ratings" for just about everything are in decline including issues where factual evidence runs to the contrary. People have lower approval for corporations, government, the president, republicans, democrats, unions and the church. And they think violent crime is going up when we know it's actually going down. So while I made an appeal to polls earlier on I roll my eyes at these types of approval ratings. Helsing posted:The thing about lobbying and marketing more generally is that it's only the tip of the spear. They certainly play a role, sometimes a large role, in determining policy, but corporate influence goes deeper. You present this as if it's a new development. It's not. The rich and upper classes have been pulling the strings forever, it's better today than probably any other time in history. P.S. I intend to make a longer response to your previous post at some point. But no time now.
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Aug 13, 2014 03:27
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That's not true. The reason people have been beating the drums on class issues in the US is that the balance has tilted overwhelmingly towards the ultra-rich in recent decades. In the US at least, something has changed.quote:If campaign donations were banned, lobbyist influence would be essentially unchanged. Campaign finance is not how influence is actually exerted. Staff generally neither know nor care very much about whether the person coming to see them is a campaign donor. The way to influence staff (which most of the time is the goal) is to talk to them and have them trust what you're telling them. That's why the whole emphasis on campaign finance has always struck me as misguided and a good way to burn time and energy on something meaningless. While influence peddling is a big thing, ultimately it takes money to get elected. Politicians spend a HUGE portion of their time and their staffs time raising that money. There is a direct and obvious link there with corruption and responsiveness to someone or some group willing to donate large sums. Public financing is not a magic built but it seems inarguably to me that the less a politician has to sweat blood over every cent the less responsive they will be to fat wallets.
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Aug 13, 2014 13:29
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:That's not true. The reason people have been beating the drums on class issues in the US is that the balance has tilted overwhelmingly towards the ultra-rich in recent decades. In the US at least, something has changed. In what way were the "people at large" more powerful in say 1975? 1925?
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Aug 13, 2014 18:05
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:That's not true. The reason people have been beating the drums on class issues in the US is that the balance has tilted overwhelmingly towards the ultra-rich in recent decades. In the US at least, something has changed. And what does that mean in terms of political power and when do you think things were actually better? Cash spending on elections isn't that useful and probably hasn't been going up (Source (2003)). On the other topic (Rudatron/Helsing's studies), if it turns out politicians just don't listen to poor people I can assure you it's not a new development (and much harder to solve too).
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Aug 14, 2014 00:24
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Kalman posted:State legislatures are usually the people who draw up Congressional districts, for example, and Congressmen are literally never in charge of it. How about you start by learning how poo poo actually works instead of making up how you think it works? Regardless of how you want to view it, there isn't really any solution to "accountability" problems that doesn't involve fixing blatant election rigging.
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Aug 14, 2014 03:36
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Decent Atlantic peice on the subject of transparency. The Atlantic posted:The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to lament that his beloved New York City had lost the ability to get things done: I think the bold is the strongest point here. Somewhat related, the argument gets made that eliminating earmarks has caused problems as well. Earmarks used to be a source of compromise and a source of power for party leadership. Without them there is little you can offer Joe Tea-Party to pry him off his ridiculous position. Earmarks were an obvious source of waste, and tool for backroom deals right that should obviously be eliminated right? - it's not that simple.
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Aug 14, 2014 13:09
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Nintendo Kid posted:In what way were the "people at large" more powerful in say 1975? 1925? I wouldn't say the people at large were more powerful in 1925 (though they were probably more militant and class conscious). However in 1975 union density was higher, the government was more committed to economic security for average people and 'free trade' wasn't an automatic justification for cutting benefits and the middle and working class hadn't yet been placed in such direct competition with low wage workers in other regions of the world. While its a crude measure you can see the effects of these differences by looking at the wage and profit shares of GDP. Wages used to take up a larger share and profits took up a smaller one. Since the neoliberal era began we've seen the wage share decline and profits have risen. Since productivity has continued to increase that implies that the rich got better at squeezing money out of the poor, which in turn suggests a diminution of working class power. asdf32 posted:You present this as if it's a new development. It's not. I never said or implied that the ruling class manufacturing and using ideology to justify its rule was new. However the way this plays out in practice is different in every era and ought to be studied in its specific historical context, not dismissed as some kind of timeless and unchanging truth. quote:The rich and upper classes have been pulling the strings forever, it's better today than probably any other time in history. Why is it better today? You've presented zero evidence in that regard. asdf32 posted:And what does that mean in terms of political power and when do you think things were actually better? Its hard to definitively say that one historical period was "better" or "worse" than another because it's incredibly hard to come up with a good way to actually compare historical periods except in very broad and general terms. I also think its a bad question since it seems designed to distract us from the much more relevant question of "how could things be better right now?" That having been said, I think that mid century the government was much more committed to economic security for the majority, and middle and working class people tended to be better organized and more likely to have their views and concerns represented in the media. quote:On the other topic (Rudatron/Helsing's studies), if it turns out politicians just don't listen to poor people I can assure you it's not a new development (and much harder to solve too). Frankly this feels pretty disingenuous. You started out dismissing the idea that politicians were ignoring large parts of the population. Presented with contradictory evidence you say "IF I'm wrong then it's clearly a timeless truth of society", with the obvious implication that we can't fix it and should just resign ourselves to the status quo. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too, "heads I win, tails you lose". Your original statement was "Polls are the best we have for judging public will and broadly speaking I don't think polls differ from actual policy that much." Are you now retracting that argument? You now seem to be saying that the government has always ignored the desires of the poor. That is a huge and seemingly unacknowledged reversal of your position.
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Aug 14, 2014 20:01
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Helsing posted:the middle and working class hadn't yet been placed in such direct competition with low wage workers in other regions of the world. Though this is because we bombed the world to hell and back 30 years prior. Historically the US has had a lot of foreign competition for goods.
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Aug 14, 2014 20:04
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computer parts posted:Though this is because we bombed the world to hell and back 30 years prior. This makes no sense. Trade regimes are political. The decision to enact "free" trade was clearly biased against working class people in a way that was not inevitably determined. For instance the protection of many professionals such as doctors and lawyers remains basically intact whereas factory workers must now compete with people in China. If you want a really blatant example of this just look at how free trade has tended to reinforce and extend expensive Intellectual Property "rights". Plenty of countries like India and China could be mass producing very cheap drugs, which would translate into big savings for society. But instead free trade always seems to make this harder and lets pharmaceutical companies extract high rents from their "intellectual property". If the increase in global trade had been regulated differently then there's no a priori reason to assume that we'd see the same effect on inequality or wages.
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Aug 14, 2014 20:34
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Helsing posted:This makes no sense. Trade regimes are political. The decision to enact "free" trade was clearly biased against working class people in a way that was not inevitably determined. For instance the protection of many professionals such as doctors and lawyers remains basically intact whereas factory workers must now compete with people in China. The US doesn't have free trade agreements with China. What I'm saying is that the only reason that other countries didn't previously take US manufacturing jobs is that competing infrastructure was demolished in previous conflicts and/or countries were left undeveloped in the first place. And China routinely violates IP law all the time (just as the US did 150 years ago), they're not beholden to it in the slightest.
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Aug 14, 2014 20:44
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computer parts posted:Though this is because we bombed the world to hell and back 30 years prior. Not really. Prior to containerized ships trade volumes were comparatively lower. Most stuff had to be made locally.
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Aug 14, 2014 21:12
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computer parts posted:The US doesn't have free trade agreements with China. What I'm saying is that the only reason that other countries didn't previously take US manufacturing jobs is that competing infrastructure was demolished in previous conflicts and/or countries were left undeveloped in the first place. The US was also much more protectionist back then, a fact you're seemingly ignoring. International trade is not going to inevitably raise or lower wages because "international trade" is caught up in a series of political decisions. The effect of trade on wages cannot be separated from the political decisions that a country makes in how to regulate trade. And saying the US doesn't have a free trade deal with China is immaterial. Since the late 1980s the US has been actively exposing its working class population to international competition with other low wage workers. Germany is an instructive counter example here. They've been very successful at exporting their manufactured goods without seeing the same kind of massive reductions in wages and benefits that the USA has. There have certainly been changes in the German economy but nothing on the scale of what happened in the US. quote:And China routinely violates IP law all the time (just as the US did 150 years ago), they're not beholden to it in the slightest. You're missing my point. If increased global trade automatically lowers wages then why hasn't this happened to doctors, lawyers, big pharma, etc.? Because those groups are better organized and have more money and can therefore lobby for protection. At one point in the 1990s the American Medical Association complained that foreign doctors practicing in the USA were reducing their wages. The US government responded by making it harder for foreign doctors to practice in America. That's literally the opposite of what was happening to manufacturing workers at that time. I know its comforting to think you can explain away the reduction in working class wages with a single factor like increased global competition but its really nowhere near that simple.
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Aug 14, 2014 21:18
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Helsing posted:This makes no sense. Trade regimes are political. The decision to enact "free" trade was clearly biased against working class people in a way that was not inevitably determined. For instance the protection of many professionals such as doctors and lawyers remains basically intact whereas factory workers must now compete with people in China. How is a foreign doctor supposed to compete with a local one? This doesn't make any sense. There are real differences between a factory worker and a doctor in terms of the ability of foreign workers to compete. And why would you expect IP laws to not be applied globally? Yes it's possible. But all the reasons that cause IP laws to exist domestically apply to foreign companies as well. The possibility that things could have been done differently doesn't mean that there arnt signifiant underlying reasons for why they ended up the way they did. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Aug 14, 2014 |
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Aug 14, 2014 21:27
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Helsing posted:The US was also much more protectionist back then, a fact you're seemingly ignoring. International trade is not going to inevitably raise or lower wages because "international trade" is caught up in a series of political decisions. The effect of trade on wages cannot be separated from the political decisions that a country makes in how to regulate trade. Mostly those groups haven't (yet) experienced wage lowering because their work isn't as portable as traditional working class labor is. (With the exception of big pharma, where it absolutely has happened because that work is eminently portable in the same way as any other form of applied R&D and manufacturing.). My doctor can't be in China because he needs to be in the same room as me. If a Chinese doctor were to come here to do it, they face the same structural constraints (few of which are protectionist in the way you imply - there's not exactly a shortage of foreign-trained doctors) as a US-trained doctor and will expect the same wages as a result. For lawyers, the protectionism doesn't really matter because there's already an oversupply of licensed people - adding in foreign-trained lawyers won't affect the high end wages (clients won't pay for what they perceive as inferior quality) and the low end wages are already being forced towards minimum wage because of the existing oversupply.
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Aug 14, 2014 21:43
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asdf32 posted:How is a foreign doctor supposed to compete with a local one? This doesn't make any sense. There are real differences between a factory worker and a doctor in terms of the ability of foreign workers to compete. And yes, the difference is that the doctor has more money and is therefore more valued by the government.
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Aug 14, 2014 21:58
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Nessus posted:The foreign doctor comes to America and opens a medical practice, that's how. So they have money so that's why the have money? Sorry, factory workers had some of the most powerful unions and it didn't stop them from getting the rug swept out from underneath them by foreign competition when foreign competition became a possibility. If factory workers were only in competition with highly educated immigrants they would also still be fine.
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Aug 14, 2014 22:22
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Helsing posted:The US was also much more protectionist back then, a fact you're seemingly ignoring. International trade is not going to inevitably raise or lower wages because "international trade" is caught up in a series of political decisions. The effect of trade on wages cannot be separated from the political decisions that a country makes in how to regulate trade. International trade depends on more than just you and [the rest of the world]. If you're heavily protectionist but have a monopoly on a given product (say, corn) you can dictate policies that favor your country and the world can't do anything about it (ignoring military action and the like but that's not really a thing for the US). If another country now can make your product (eg, China can now grow corn in large amounts) *and* they're willing to give good deals on trade for the rest of the world, you lose your advantage. It doesn't matter how protectionist you are if no one wants your stuff (or rather, if they can get a better deal for it). That's why the global markets trend towards either free trade for all or some sort of economic block and domination**. **(though another answer is "open your markets by force" but that hasn't really been relevant since nuclear weapons were invented) quote:And saying the US doesn't have a free trade deal with China is immaterial. Since the late 1980s the US has been actively exposing its working class population to international competition with other low wage workers. Germany's a pretty bad example because they're using the EU as their own protected market and they're manipulating policy to support their own market. Again, from my above example Germany formed an economic block with them at the center and they profit massively from it. quote:You're missing my point. If increased global trade automatically lowers wages then why hasn't this happened to doctors, lawyers, big pharma, etc.? Because those groups are better organized and have more money and can therefore lobby for protection. At one point in the 1990s the American Medical Association complained that foreign doctors practicing in the USA were reducing their wages. The US government responded by making it harder for foreign doctors to practice in America. That's literally the opposite of what was happening to manufacturing workers at that time. As noted, there's a difference between providing a service for money and providing a product. The one example of a product you could probably point to is automobiles, but those are expensive by design (ie, they're big and heavy so shipping costs a lot) and you can sell them for 5 figures of money so it makes sense to keep production local.
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Aug 15, 2014 00:46
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asdf32 posted:So they have money so that's why the have money?
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Aug 15, 2014 01:20
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computer parts posted:Though this is because we bombed the world to hell and back 30 years prior. The US was a net exporter from 1870 to 1970 though? Net exports did fall to around 1% of GDP in the interwar period as governments became more protectionist. WWII/immediate post war US did have higher exports than the inter war period, but after 1950 exports never reached 2% of GDP.
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Aug 15, 2014 03:46
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asdf32 posted:Decent Atlantic peice on the subject of transparency. Man, it sure was great back when one old racist shithead could block the whole civil rights agenda, wasn't it? That article made a believer out of me, especially the part where the entire thing was a politician telling us how great it would be if we'd just let politicians make all the decisions in secret back room deals...so the lobbyists won't know that the politicians are secretly model public servants working tirelessy on behalf of the people. Nintendo Kid posted:We "rolled it back" and nothing changed in politics from it, what does that tell you? Because see, people with money already knew how to fully get around all of it, using perfectly legal and even reasonable means. Should we just legalize naked bribery then, since laws against bribery don't prevent me from making a perfectly legal campaign donation and making it clear that my future support depends on a vote going my way? This seems to be the logical conclusion of this train of argument. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 04:35
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