Oppose Redistribution; Communism and Socialism

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Orwell
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07 Sep 2010, 6:07 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Orwell wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
How big a customer base is there for Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers?

I'll take three, please.

I wouldn't mind one either. Can mine come with a temporal anomaly which enables it to almost defeat the Imperial Japanese Navy just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Only if mine include Romulan cloaking devices.


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xenon13
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07 Sep 2010, 7:26 pm

Cliffracerslayer wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
I don't know what the heck is going on in England that people think that jobs have to be preferable, but in the USA since there are a good deal of unemployed people who are available to work, there is less demand for any individual job applicant. As such, employers are more free to pick and choose, and job security is practically null and void since there are already 50* or more other applicants ready and willing to take any job available.

*(number of applicants daily from the manager of the local Dairy Queen in my area as of about a month ago.)


Same everywhere I'm afraid. That is the problem. What I was saying though is that the less pressure there is to work, the better the jobs will be regardless.

If there is no 'work pressure', even if 50 people are available to do the job, unless the job is better than not working, nobody will do it.

My argument then is that supporting the unemployed is actually (within reason) to the direct benefit of the employed, while pressure to work (including low or non-existent benefits) is to their detriment.



That's it, exactly. Workers are shooting themselves in the foot for demanding tougher measures against unemployed people. They are causing their own bargaining position to be weaker. If the boss-captured governments want a reserve army of labour, and they do, then those in that army must be made to be as comfortable as possible. Make the people who benefit from this army, the owner class, pay.



iamnotaparakeet
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08 Sep 2010, 1:25 am

Orwell wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Orwell wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
How big a customer base is there for Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers?

I'll take three, please.

I wouldn't mind one either. Can mine come with a temporal anomaly which enables it to almost defeat the Imperial Japanese Navy just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Only if mine include Romulan cloaking devices.

If your ships get Romulan cloaking devices, then I want Federation phase-cloaking devices.*

*working ones only which do not deactivate while traveling through a planet or otherwise cause absolute fatalities of all hands.



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08 Sep 2010, 8:23 am

visagrunt wrote:
The link between the minimum wage and the unemployment rate is, in my view, a fallacy. Unemployment is a macroeconomic phenomenon that is driven by monetary policy.


Unemployment is driven by a shortage of demand, which is driven by poverty, the principle cause of which is unemployment. It is a vicious circle.

The minimum wage would actually reduce unemployment by creating a greater market, thus increasing the demand for labor+investment to fulfill that market. 'Investment room' is a good term to use, there must be a wealthy consumer market that is large in order to render investment rather than speculation a viable option.

To increase supply (labour force) without increasing demand (the ability of most people to purchase goods and services) is economic folly. By increasing demand, a minimum wage reduces unemployment.



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08 Sep 2010, 11:19 am

Cliffracerslayer wrote:
visagrunt wrote:
The link between the minimum wage and the unemployment rate is, in my view, a fallacy. Unemployment is a macroeconomic phenomenon that is driven by monetary policy.


Unemployment is driven by a shortage of demand, which is driven by poverty, the principle cause of which is unemployment. It is a vicious circle.

The minimum wage would actually reduce unemployment by creating a greater market, thus increasing the demand for labor+investment to fulfill that market. 'Investment room' is a good term to use, there must be a wealthy consumer market that is large in order to render investment rather than speculation a viable option.

To increase supply (labour force) without increasing demand (the ability of most people to purchase goods and services) is economic folly. By increasing demand, a minimum wage reduces unemployment.


You seem to be mixing your concepts here.

Keynes certainly posits that a failure in aggregate demand will create a depression, but increasing the minimum wage will not actually demonstrate a significant improvement in aggregate demand.

I think that the stronger economic argument in favour of minimum wage regulation is the monopsonistic model in which employers have significantly unbalanced buying power. By regulating the purchase of services (in the same way that a monopolistic model would regulate sale of services), both wages and employment can be increased, so long as the minimum wage does not exceed the marginal productivity of labour.


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08 Sep 2010, 11:36 am

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Orwell wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Orwell wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
How big a customer base is there for Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers?

I'll take three, please.

I wouldn't mind one either. Can mine come with a temporal anomaly which enables it to almost defeat the Imperial Japanese Navy just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Only if mine include Romulan cloaking devices.

If your ships get Romulan cloaking devices, then I want Federation phase-cloaking devices.*

Those are illegal and you know it.

Also, I don't know how well they would work on a boat. I mean, you really want to pass through matter? You'd be sitting in the Earth's core until you ran out of power and your phase-cloaking device failed.


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iamnotaparakeet
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08 Sep 2010, 5:29 pm

Orwell wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Orwell wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Orwell wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
How big a customer base is there for Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers?

I'll take three, please.

I wouldn't mind one either. Can mine come with a temporal anomaly which enables it to almost defeat the Imperial Japanese Navy just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Only if mine include Romulan cloaking devices.

If your ships get Romulan cloaking devices, then I want Federation phase-cloaking devices.*

Those are illegal and you know it.

Also, I don't know how well they would work on a boat. I mean, you really want to pass through matter? You'd be sitting in the Earth's core until you ran out of power and your phase-cloaking device failed.


Well, if you were to not have any effects of drag or friction applied, then it could easily be a method of passing to the exact opposite side of the planet or, if the device remained active indefinitely, oscillating along a diameter of the globe until finally deactivated. Perhaps some thrusters could be useful for increasing the amplitude and adjusting angular orientation with respect to the center of gravity.



mcg
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08 Sep 2010, 10:16 pm

Orwell wrote:
mcg wrote:
Nonsense. It is extremely basic economics that price floors cause surpluses,

In principle, yes. You'll find that, as in other disciplines, "basic" economics is so simple as to be a very poor reflection of reality. In regards to minimum wage specifically, most unemployed people today aren't working in a field that would ever pay them as low as minimum wage, much less below. You really think university-educated engineers will start working for $3/hour?
Yes, I would expect him to work for $3/hr if he had no money or other job prospects. That being said, a university educated engineer is capable of producing more than $3 of marginal product in an hour, so in a competitive labor market he would certainly be making above that, even if he was unable to find another job as an engineer. If a person is relying on personal savings, unemployment, or welfare while they look for a job then that ain't involuntary unemployment, it's voluntary. If I wanna be a pro basketball player, but nobody is willing to pay me to do that then that isn't involuntary unemployment.

Orwell wrote:
Quote:
Additionally, there is no historical record of unemployment prior to the minimum wage.

Complete and utter BS. You do not get to make up your own facts.

Quote:
Granted there are some other factors at present (all government imposed, though)

Right, anything that ever goes wrong is purely the fault of government. :roll: Here in the real world, the economy is somewhat more complex than that. Market failures exist, misallocations of resources happen, etc.
Market failures may exist, but they are outweighed by failures of government. I think a sustainable limited government is impossible so any government is therefore bad.

Orwell wrote:
Quote:
but abolishing the minimum wage would certainly reduce unemployment significantly.

There is actually very little convincing evidence that this is true.

Here's a list of studies on the topic. Do you think there is convincing evidence that raising the minimum wage would increase unemployment? If not, shouldn't we do so?

Orwell wrote:
Quote:
Just out of curiosity, do you support minimum wage laws? If so, why?

I don't have a terribly strong stance on it either way. The details of labor economics go beyond my own limited understanding of economics, so I can't plausibly advocate one way or the other.

Quote:
If someone is working for less than a living wage, then it is because that is BETTER than the next best option.

Sure, let's go back to the good old days with 19th-century sweatshops where people will still work because it is better than the next best option. :roll:

So we should outlaw the best option and force people to go with an even worse option? Also, labor conditions were IMPROVING at a truly amazing rate in the 19th century. Sure they seem bad by today's standards, but you can't just suddenly regulate millions of people out of abject poverty. It seems to me that you are blaming the market for pre-existing poor conditions and giving the government credit for the improvements that resulted from economic growth.



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08 Sep 2010, 11:13 pm

mcg wrote:
Yes, I would expect him to work for $3/hr if he had no money or other job prospects. That being said, a university educated engineer is capable of producing more than $3 of marginal product in an hour, so in a competitive labor market he would certainly be making above that, even if he was unable to find another job as an engineer.

Not necessarily true. Other posters have already pointed out the problems of monopsonistic competition, where market forces can result in workers being paid significantly less than the marginal value they add.

Quote:
Market failures may exist, but they are outweighed by failures of government. I think a sustainable limited government is impossible so any government is therefore bad.

You have not demonstrated this to be the case, and I highly doubt that you could.

And you were wrong about there being no unemployment before minimum wage laws. Did you read that on one of your silly anarchist websites, or did you make it up all on your own?

Quote:
Do you think there is convincing evidence that raising the minimum wage would increase unemployment? If not, shouldn't we do so?

It depends on how much you raise the minimum wage, among other factors. The specific details of that sort of analysis are beyond my abilities.

Quote:
It seems to me that you are blaming the market for pre-existing poor conditions and giving the government credit for the improvements that resulted from economic growth.

Now where have I given the government credit for improvements? You are making assumptions. But the government certainly did have some part to play in those improvements.


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08 Sep 2010, 11:55 pm

mcg wrote:
Yes, I would expect him to work for $3/hr if he had no money or other job prospects. That being said, a university educated engineer is capable of producing more than $3 of marginal product in an hour, so in a competitive labor market he would certainly be making above that, even if he was unable to find another job as an engineer. If a person is relying on personal savings, unemployment, or welfare while they look for a job then that ain't involuntary unemployment, it's voluntary. If I wanna be a pro basketball player, but nobody is willing to pay me to do that then that isn't involuntary unemployment.

Few people are so desperate for work. I mean, seriously, the engineering student might just prefer to live with his mom and wait for a better job than work $3/hr. Now, that's violating your assumptions, but the assumptions are rather extreme.

Secondly, a university educated engineer doesn't have a set "wage-rate" and his employment really has a lot to do with many other factors. I mean, let's just say that our engineer cannot conduct an interview at all. Well, he might not get employed.

As for the issue of involuntary vs voluntary employment, I really don't care about the issue you put forward. The real issue is that employers aren't going to pick up bums off the street and hire them. Rather, employing someone involves risk for employers, regardless of whether there are government regulations or not. For that reason, a person won't necessarily be able to get a job with ease, even any job for that matter(and employers might not hire them for any job, as an overqualified employee is also a risk as such an employee may jump ship at the first opportunity). Even further, it is to be expected that people will engage in a rational search, as a person will not immediately leave engineering to flip burgers, but rather they will first search for engineering jobs, and then move down as they get desperate. I do not see it as unreasonable to call a person still in a search process "involuntarily unemployed", but I really don't care about the labels.

Quote:
Market failures may exist, but they are outweighed by failures of government. I think a sustainable limited government is impossible so any government is therefore bad.

Only if you argue that market failures will be small in areas where we have less study.

Quote:
Here's a list of studies on the topic. Do you think there is convincing evidence that raising the minimum wage would increase unemployment? If not, shouldn't we do so?

The key word is "significantly". Your site doesn't show significance.



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08 Sep 2010, 11:59 pm

mcg wrote:
Nonsense. It is extremely basic economics that price floors cause surpluses, and it has been empirically shown that minimum wage laws drastically affect unemployment among ethnic minorities and poorly educated people. Additionally, there is no historical record of unemployment prior to the minimum wage. Granted there are some other factors at present (all government imposed, though) that might keep unemployment a little higher than 0, but abolishing the minimum wage would certainly reduce unemployment significantly.

Umm.... ok? That still doesn't prove your point. I mean, minimum wages negatively impact these groups, but that does not mean that you've understood all of the issue.

1) "No surpluses" only works in an equilibrium economy. Economies are not in equilibrium though, but rather equilibrium is just a heuristic device economists use to analyze policy effects. The fact of the matter is that if a person loses their job or quits, they aren't immediately employed, but rather they are "unemployed" and remain so until they find another employer, a process that takes time.
2) I really have to be skeptical of your history. Even during war-time, in which people were drafted into service, and labor was scarce, unemployment existed.
3) The minimum wage really doesn't impact most people at all. I think it is a bit of a waste, but, that's just that.

Quote:
The fact that hardly anyone works for minimum wage is all more the reason to get rid of it.

Well... it actually just shows that the law's existence is practically irrelevant.

Quote:
By the way, this fact does not indicate that a reduction of the minimum wage would not reduce unemployment. If someone is unable to produce the minimum wage's worth of value in an hour, then that person is not going to get a raise to minimum wage (at a loss for the business owner), they are going to be let go and replaced by more productive workers or a more capital intensive and less labor intensive production process.

Umm... I don't think that this is the issue in many cases. Working also has to be worth it to the employee, and few people will work for less than a minimum wage.



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09 Sep 2010, 12:45 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
1) "No surpluses" only works in an equilibrium economy. Economies are not in equilibrium though, but rather equilibrium is just a heuristic device economists use to analyze policy effects. The fact of the matter is that if a person loses their job or quits, they aren't immediately employed, but rather they are "unemployed" and remain so until they find another employer, a process that takes time.
Yeah, but that's a different kind of unemployment then what I'm talking about. I'm talking about involuntary unemployment as defined above (the kind of unemployment that can kill you).

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
2) I really have to be skeptical of your history. Even during war-time, in which people were drafted into service, and labor was scarce, unemployment existed.
Structural and frictional unemployment always exists. I'm talking about involuntary unemployment. That being said, I can't find any statistics that go that far back on the internet, so I'm just gonna drop this issue entirely. A strong case can be made for abolishing the minimum wage without it.

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
3) The minimum wage really doesn't impact most people at all. I think it is a bit of a waste, but, that's just that.
Quote:
The fact that hardly anyone works for minimum wage is all more the reason to get rid of it.

Well... it actually just shows that the law's existence is practically irrelevant.
It limits the freedom to engage in a mutually beneficial transaction and provides no benefit to most people. That alone is reason to abolish it, but when you think about the effect it has on ethnic minorities and the uneducated a much stronger case can be made. These people could be getting paid to get training that would enable them to become self-sufficient.

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Quote:
By the way, this fact does not indicate that a reduction of the minimum wage would not reduce unemployment. If someone is unable to produce the minimum wage's worth of value in an hour, then that person is not going to get a raise to minimum wage (at a loss for the business owner), they are going to be let go and replaced by more productive workers or a more capital intensive and less labor intensive production process.

Umm... I don't think that this is the issue in many cases. Working also has to be worth it to the employee, and few people will work for less than a minimum wage.
If there are no better options, anybody but a fool would be willing to work for less than the minimum wage. Clearly the law doesn't affect anybody who would be unwilling to work for less than the current minimum wage, but I would consider them voluntarily unemployed.

Anyways, with the coming deflation it seems only proper that the minimum wage be reduced (joke)



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09 Sep 2010, 12:54 am

Orwell wrote:
mcg wrote:
Yes, I would expect him to work for $3/hr if he had no money or other job prospects. That being said, a university educated engineer is capable of producing more than $3 of marginal product in an hour, so in a competitive labor market he would certainly be making above that, even if he was unable to find another job as an engineer.

Not necessarily true. Other posters have already pointed out the problems of monopsonistic competition, where market forces can result in workers being paid significantly less than the marginal value they add.
Competitive market implies perfect competition. I am skeptical that the situation you describe would ever occur in a truly free market. Do you have any examples?



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09 Sep 2010, 7:28 am

mcg wrote:
Yeah, but that's a different kind of unemployment then what I'm talking about. I'm talking about involuntary unemployment as defined above (the kind of unemployment that can kill you).

I don't find your distinction that valuable. If we had a ton of deadly unemployment, then it would matter more, but unemployment that reduces the quality of an individual's life is bad enough.

Quote:
Structural and frictional unemployment always exists. I'm talking about involuntary unemployment. That being said, I can't find any statistics that go that far back on the internet, so I'm just gonna drop this issue entirely. A strong case can be made for abolishing the minimum wage without it.

Ok, but the major source of involuntary unemployment is usually considered to be bad labor markets, and those usually have nothing to do with minimum wages so much as recessionary periods or other similer things.

Quote:
It limits the freedom to engage in a mutually beneficial transaction and provides no benefit to most people. That alone is reason to abolish it, but when you think about the effect it has on ethnic minorities and the uneducated a much stronger case can be made. These people could be getting paid to get training that would enable them to become self-sufficient.

Ok, but the problem with the first is that if these transactions are unlikely to occur anyway, they end up being more like a law against selling giant cardboard cut-outs of Grover Cleveland. Almost nobody is affected, so the law doesn't matter that much. Your argument is stronger when talking about minorities. That being said, I don't think most people think McDonalds is the best way to get "training". What kind of training? (I have no idea whether they pay the minimum wage either)

Quote:
If there are no better options, anybody but a fool would be willing to work for less than the minimum wage. Clearly the law doesn't affect anybody who would be unwilling to work for less than the current minimum wage, but I would consider them voluntarily unemployed.

Who literally has no other options? They can sponge off of their mom. They can go to a friend's place to crash a bit. The fact of the matter is that usually there are more options than that. I also have no opinion on "voluntarily unemployed or not". I really can't imagine someone in the current system you would consider to be involuntarily unemployed by your definition, however, I would still tend more towards regarding a rational search that has not provided a good position as involuntary enough.

Anyways, with the coming deflation it seems only proper that the minimum wage be reduced (joke)[/quote]



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09 Sep 2010, 11:47 am

There was a depression in the 1890s (before any minimum wage laws existed) with persistent unemployment in excess of 10%. That's just one example, which can be found by anyone with two minutes and access to Wikipedia.

mcg wrote:
Orwell wrote:
mcg wrote:
Yes, I would expect him to work for $3/hr if he had no money or other job prospects. That being said, a university educated engineer is capable of producing more than $3 of marginal product in an hour, so in a competitive labor market he would certainly be making above that, even if he was unable to find another job as an engineer.

Not necessarily true. Other posters have already pointed out the problems of monopsonistic competition, where market forces can result in workers being paid significantly less than the marginal value they add.
Competitive market implies perfect competition. I am skeptical that the situation you describe would ever occur in a truly free market. Do you have any examples?

The problem is that "perfect competition" is an abstraction used for toy examples in introductory economics. It doesn't actually exist in the real world. In labor markets, the buyers (employers) have significantly more market power than sellers (employees) meaning that in general employees must take whatever is on offer, even if it is a clearly worse deal than they would get under hypothetical perfect competition.

Look, other posters have already talked about this. Just read about monopsonistic competition on Wikipedia and you'll know more than you do now. You might be right that the situation I described wouldn't occur in a "truly free market" if you define perfect competition as an aspect of a truly free market. But in that case, there can never be a "truly free market" so your argument is moot.


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09 Sep 2010, 2:34 pm

Orwell wrote:
There was a depression in the 1890s (before any minimum wage laws existed) with persistent unemployment in excess of 10%. That's just one example, which can be found by anyone with two minutes and access to Wikipedia.
That was caused by those other government-imposed factor I previously mentioned, the McKinley Tariff and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act being the main ones. Rothbard's History of Money and Banking in the US covers this and other panics in more detail, if you are interested.

Orwell wrote:
mcg wrote:
Orwell wrote:
mcg wrote:
Yes, I would expect him to work for $3/hr if he had no money or other job prospects. That being said, a university educated engineer is capable of producing more than $3 of marginal product in an hour, so in a competitive labor market he would certainly be making above that, even if he was unable to find another job as an engineer.

Not necessarily true. Other posters have already pointed out the problems of monopsonistic competition, where market forces can result in workers being paid significantly less than the marginal value they add.
Competitive market implies perfect competition. I am skeptical that the situation you describe would ever occur in a truly free market. Do you have any examples?

The problem is that "perfect competition" is an abstraction used for toy examples in introductory economics. It doesn't actually exist in the real world. In labor markets, the buyers (employers) have significantly more market power than sellers (employees) meaning that in general employees must take whatever is on offer, even if it is a clearly worse deal than they would get under hypothetical perfect competition.

Look, other posters have already talked about this. Just read about monopsonistic competition on Wikipedia and you'll know more than you do now. You might be right that the situation I described wouldn't occur in a "truly free market" if you define perfect competition as an aspect of a truly free market. But in that case, there can never be a "truly free market" so your argument is moot.
No, my definition of truly free market is not tautological. It is simply a market with the complete absence of explicit coercion (as opposed to kind-of free market we have in the US). Again, if you would like to give a specific example then I can point to specific legislation.