Socialism

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I'm not quite as distrustful of the government, but I tend to be leery of putting anything in the hands of the federal government, the state government to a lesser degree. The less my own vote can affect it, the less comfortable with it I am. I think that higher minimum wages have proven effective, but I think that it's better and really a bit more workable to put this in the hands of local governments.

I distrust most governments with many economic issues, state governments the least, however, even them I tend to distrust ideas that tend not to work with the market but rather just impose restrictions. I think that higher minimum wages are not purely foul evils and I know that part of this is a matter of market power, however, I still think that they are not the ideal solution by any means. I still support the EITC as being better than the minimum wage in its ability to target the right people, in its ability to impose the burdens on the group that it belongs to, and in its lesser ability to have any negative distortions upon market conditions. The EITC is a currently existing system and is lauded by many currently existing economists. I believe that it has more broad support across the economics community than the minimum wage.

I still think that such decisions should be left up to individual municipalities. This way, those who do not want to have a minimum wage or feel that it is unnecessary will not have to implement it, and those who care to have a high minimum wage can feel free to set it as high as they would like. There is really no reason that I can think of for the state or federal government to get involved.

Right, I will not deny the right by local government to do something of that nature. I still assert the idea that I do not think it is a wise choice of policy.

It seems to get pretty good results, though, from what I've heard.

And other policies are likely better in terms of economic efficiency. Should we pick the policy that is less effective at our end or the one that would be better? The latter most assuredly. The EITC is argued to be the better measure by quite a few nobel prize winners and other thinkers. It has this backing and relies on the assumptions that we have always assumed while leading to less problems in all of this. Should we not support it over the minimum wage?

I didn't know that they were mutually exclusive.

They are not mutually exclusive. However, they aim at the same task and there is little reason why the EITC could not theoretically carry the entire burden. That was after all the entire aim of the NIT. The minimum wage can have negative effects and there are a significant number of scholars that claim these are important. The EITC as I stated tends to have less worries about distortions and negative affects on certain groups. I know that you are playing stupid though Griff.

I wouldn't know how to. I don't know why you're supportive of EITC, though. I thought you were against welfare.

I really don't know why you're not out in the street carrying a placard championing my views, though. Look, if I had my way, the federal and state mandated minimum wages would be abolished, and the matter would be left up to municipalities, which are really perfectly capable of handling the matter on their own. There's just no logical reason to send it up to the state or feds. I'd just be more apt to make real estate investments in one that adopted a relatively high minimum wage. It's supposed to work rather well.

I am more against minimum wages. The EITC though is pretty much the descendant of a Milton Friedman idea, and because most people would argue that something must be done, I would rather have the idea from Friedman, that goes with markets and that does not have as large of negative problems than one that doesn't. Not only that but the idea behind minimum wages is essentially a welfare one just put together in a manner that seems less efficient to me. You cannot claim that the minimum wage is a matter of no government intervention, it is simply the government banning a certain contract between 2 individuals from ever occurring.

Fine, let us simply end this discussion. I just tend to be much more distrusting of high minimum wages for reasons I think I elaborated upon earlier to someone else. I think that it is often misdirected, I think that it is more likely to hurt those who need the help most, I think that it leads to inefficiency in functionings, and I think that the EITC is better in most ways.

That's it. After yet more thinking, I have decided that Machinocracy is the most logical system. It can be properly planned, resource distribution can be controlled, it does not suffer from inflation or business cycles, is fair to everyone, and ensures that everyone gets fair wages.

Screw what I said about capitalism. It works, but Machinocracy is better provided you have an intelligent, idealistic, and strong leadership. Why should footballers have obscene salaries, for instance? It's a total waste of resources. It shouldn't be about money, but purpose.
Credits which have an assigned value obsolete inflation, interest, and such. Heck, companies wouldn't be about survival, but providing services to society. Games producers, for instance would provide services, with bonuses for innovation. There would be ideas departments whose purpose is to come up with new ideas, both for the future and for design.
Not working results in no payment.

It would need a shift in ideology, including a new brand of education....

Again, I go by results, and the evidence available to me supports a higher minimum wage. Personally, I'd like to see how high it can be cranked up before the benefit of it is lost. Traditionally, economists have argued as to what constitutes the lowest acceptable minimum wage, and they haven't paid much heed to the opposite extreme. Say, for example, one municipality cranks its minimum wage to $20 per hour. I'd like to know what the effects of this would ultimately be.

No, it cannot be properly planned. No system has ever been properly planned and the information to do so correctly cannot be created from this controlled of a system. Resource distribution has never been done perfectly correctly and mismanagement can easily result in inflation as I have said that completely imagined worlds have inflation. The business cycle is not a major concern, those have not been as strong as in the past, and some periods of less progress is better than constantly less progress. Fair is a useless term. I think that the entire idea of Machinocracy is an economic fallacy of the highest degree.

We have never seen such truly happen. Planning hasn't work, planning will not work, especially not within the context of free human relationships. On football: Why not? How? Who defines purpose? These people work large parts of their lives trying to get into football, they take and took risks of being injured and of never making it, every day they play they could be injured. Why shouldn't they receive high compensation for this? Who defines the fair wage? Football players get their money because others give them that wealth, because we are willing to pay these high sums for those particular players for our pleasure, our subjective preferences deems the pay to justly be that high.
It would require a very powerful planning device to abolish planning, and interest is a necessity for these systems in order to calculate effectively the effects of risk and other things upon a condition. Companies ARE about providing services to society, in fact, if these companies provide no service then they don't exist. Money is the method of economic calculation, it does so fluidly without master, and it does so without requiring supreme devices for figuring these things out.
That exists in any working system.
It would need totalitarianism. The only brand of education I can see working is brainwashing.

And I hate results and base all thoughts upon no logic? The evidence available to me indicates that historically minimum wages have hurt the downtrodden along with just about every other harsh labor market intervention of that nature. In fact, really the groups advising a higher minimum wage seems somewhat small. The current minimum wage increase being supported by the federal government now ends up being one of a magnitude only accepted by a small minority of the AEA. I don't think that minimum wages are beneficial at all. The day that the federal minimum wage was first enacted in 1933, 500,000 blacks lost their jobs, that group has historically been one of the most downtrodden and the fact that this occurred doesn't indicate aid to the poor but rather the opposite. Now you may state that is only an argument against the federal creation of a wage, however, this is mostly just a showing of the damage that this one policy can create on a massive scale through what it does to labor competition. You accept the individual as a firm, correct? Should we put price floors on milk then? Or on a multitude of other goods? If there is an externality then address this through taxation. Not through an alteration of the price system in such a manner.

And what I've read indicates quite the opposite. If we left it up to the federal or state government, then, we'd end up with nothing but a crummy compromise, hence my support for leaving the matter up to municipal governments. Again, I don't know why you're not supportive of my views on this. The way I'd have it, the whole matter would be left up to your own city or township, and you wouldn't have to worry about what I think unless I intended to buy a home in your town. It's the ultimate win-win solution to the whole mess.

Right, so should we just end this discussion? We both have our data, our thinkers, and etc, that tends to argue for our positions and all it would end up being is just throwing up various surveys, and studies to defend various ends and ultimately fruitless as this is indicative of entrenched and well-thought out views that would not likely be dispersed by this.

I am supportive of local control, I am not supportive of the minimum wage though. It is possible to believe in both and that position was actually argued by another thinker. This is not an attack on your plan for the minimum wage, this is an attack on the idea of one. You advocate a win-win policy in who can legislate. However, I was not bringing up the governmental authority aspect but rather the economic issues I thought existed.

Sure, if you wanna.

I think that socialism works well at a municipal level, extremely poorly on a larger scale. Generally speaking. That's just based on what I've seen, though. Since I can live in any township or city I care to, though, my thoughts on municipal level socialism shouldn't matter to anyone other than my neighbors. Hehe. I'll just butt heads with them.