Congressional GOP Are Scum!

[One_Mean_Rabbit]

How is hope factual? Hope, of course, being defined as believing in the off chance that something good will happen, especially when the odds are not in your favor?

It's not, and that's the point. Pessimism, which is the polar opposite of optimism cannot therefore be factual as well. The polar opposite of hope is despair. The MIDDLE ground *and in most cases the more accurate* is REALISM. No emotions involved, simply an anaylsis of what has been and what is most probable to be based off of facts. Not hoping for hte better or betting on the worst, to save yourself the grief of dealing with the real world when it hits.

[Dinner]

Warren Buffett recently made headlines by saying America is more likely to turn into a "sharecroppers' society" than an "ownership society." But I think the right term is a "debt peonage" society - after the system, prevalent in the post-Civil War South, in which debtors were forced to work for their creditors. The bankruptcy bill won't get us back to those bad old days all by itself, but it's a significant step in that direction.

Buffet was talking about the trade deficit and the budget deficit which is financed by foreign money when he made the quote. Krugman took that quote completely out of context. Still, I like his article and we do need a higher minimium wage; the Republicans proposed a $1.10 while Democrats called for a $2.20 raise to restore it's historical average level. The Senate Republicans killed both.

This new bankruptcy bill is the second in three years which has badly striped citizens of their right to a fresh start. I'm ashamed that my country protects the wealthy but not the working man and I'm normally a pretty free market guy.

[One_Mean_Rabbit]

Actually, I care. I do assign value judgements to motives... and altruism trumps self-interest here. 'Tis better to make charitable donations because you want to, and it's heinous to make charitable donations because it benefits you more.

While I respect your belief, I hardly think the poor person getting food/clothes from the rich guy who wants to save on his taxes cares much WHY he or she is eating or being clothed at that moment.

Again, this is just another example of our differing outlooks. I see it in the real sense, and you see it from an emotional point of view.

[Joseph]

Congressional DEMO Are Scum!. They are both scum.

[Q Classic]

OMR, maybe we should be taking this discussion of Optimism/Pessimism into another thread or PMs, since it doesn't have much to do with whether or not Congresspeople are scum or not. Which they are, be they Democrat or Republican.

While I respect your belief, I hardly think the poor person getting food/clothes from the rich guy who wants to save on his taxes cares much WHY he or she is eating or being clothed at that moment.

Whatever the beneficiaries feel is immaterial to me, an outside observer. They will assign a different value judgement to the gift they've received than I would give.

Again, this is just another example of our differing outlooks. I see it in the real sense, and you see it from an emotional point of view.

I fail to see how you're looking at it in a real sense: after all, I'm fully prepared to admit that my value judgement is completely worthless, since the matter of a donation, charitable or not, is between the donator and the recipient. I'm not a part of it, so even if I do feel that the donation is not truly "charitable", there's not much I can do about it.

[Shi Huangdi]

Small effect accompanies small increase. But a big effect on the people who lose their jobs...

That's correct, and so it's a judgement we have to make if the living standards increased by a minimum wage is worth a number of people spending a longer time unemployed.

It should be noted there was a study comparing fast food hiring in Eastern PA and New Jersey, when NJ increased it's minimum wage and Eastern PA did not, and found faster hiring growth in NJ. There are serious questions about that studie's validity.

If we'd like to fix this problem, perhaps we should lower the minimum wage, but rigidly enforce it- no more casual off the books hiring.

I don't see what the size of the min wage and enforcement of it have to do with each other though; it should be just as easy to enforce a high minimum wage as a lower one so long as the penalties are severe enough. Stopping hiring off the books though would probably be pretty much impossible; so long as you have a willing partner for exchange, trading is going to take place, and so long as both parties remain silent is going to be pretty hard to catch.

We could allow businesses to set whatever they like for wages, which WOULD increase the number of jobs being offered as DanS and elementary economics point out; people would be guarenteed basic workplace rights; and people trying to support families off currently sub-minimum wage jobs could be sure they didn't starve to death. Might be a strain on our welfare budget, but we're cheating it right now by not paying those people, so meh.

Come to think of it you may have a point, consumer subsidies probably would be a more efficent way of helping the poor, rather then shifting the burden of assisting the poor on to businesses by means of a negative income tax on the poorest people, whereby their salary would be augmented by the government.

Although, politically as it stands a decrease in the minimum wage probably would not be packaged in with other means of helping the poor.

Ok, and there are many others in between poor and rich who are not entrepeneurs. I understand the need for all niches in the economy. I am just arguing that no one is trapped forever in a niche. Not for a lifetime.

Some people are going to make it out of property, but again because of the limited number of well paying jobs, not everyone will. If you get a college education you can, but if you don't have one as I said opportunites are decreasing. What we have been seeing in fact is downward mobility, many people who once had solid middle class jobs find themselves in less well paying jobs. Some people will escape this life on the lowest rung, and it is possible for any one person to escape this, but the way it is set up not everyone will, and some people will be trapped forever in this niche.

We also have a system that financially rewards charity donations. Who cares of the motive in which it is given, as long as it helps people.

Much of Charity often goes towards stuff such as Operas, Theatre, other charity aid goes overseas. While all of those noble aims, it wouldn't be an effective substitute for the government.

If you decide to pop out babies before you can afford them,

What if you can afford them, until that is your boyfriend decides to abandon you? And what about those babies born into that life?

We make it so that it doesn't make sense *opportunistically* to get off of welfare to work a 40 hr job making the same amount of money.

We have that now with limits for how long you can be on welfare after Gingrinch passed Welfare Reform.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

You want to fix the minimum wage hike problem? It's incredibly simple:

Right now, iirc, the base salary of a congressman is ~$155,000/year. A person working full time at minimum wage, by contrast, makes $10,712/year. In other words, the current minimum wage is about 7% of the salary of a congressman.

Okay: fix it there, so that congress can't give itself a raise without raising the minimum wage. The minimum wage will be a living wage in no time.

[Bosh]

Snowie's got a point about illegal immigration. Right now a lot of companies have it the best of both worlds. They get all the immigrants they need, but since they're illegal they can screw them over to a much greater degree than they could with citizens or legal immigrants.

What the American government needs to do is come down hard hard hard on the companies that hire illegal immigrants, that's the only way to stop the problem, you're never going to get enough border patrolmen to stop all the people who really really want to get across if there's plenty of jobs available.

At the same time US immigration laws have gotten really insane. Its become ridiculously difficult to get a student or tourist visa let alone a green card. When I tried to get my fiance into the states to meet the parents I was told that I'd have to go to the states and apply THERE for a fiance visa and then wait three months. Then we talked to an immigration lawyer about getting a tourist visa and she said she wouldn't touch my fiance unless she'd held down a job that paid well above Korea's per capita GDP for two years or had a ****-load of money in her bank account (there was a checklist of these things, and they all had to do with money ). We eneded up going to Canada.

The US economy loses billions and billions a year by putting up these kind of ridiculous hurdles in the face of people who want to come into the country legally. American higher education has been having a lot of problems with their international students having a hard time getting student visas, which is really going to hurt us in the long term. Also there's a MASSIVE business in Canada and Australia (mostly) in which Koreans (and I assume lots of other people) go over for a few months to polish up their English. These people really should be going to the States with the current weak american dollar, but they're not because of American immigration policy which is losing the American economy ****-loads of money. Its ridiculous that the American government is causing all kinds of problems for these kind of people when they're not doing more to crack down on companies hiring illegal immigrants.

[Bosh]

That's correct, and so it's a judgement we have to make if the living standards increased by a minimum wage is worth a number of people spending a longer time unemployed.

Its not that simple. You can't treat labor like any other commodity, it doesn't obey the standard laws of supply and demand the way that say bananas do. Its much much more complicated and over-simplifications of that sort really confuse the issue. Also, its very very doubtful that European minimum wage laws have all that much to do with European unemployment, I'd blame regulations that make it difficult for European companies to fire people. That way they don't hire more people during booms since they don't have to deal with getting rid of them during busts.

That said, a negative income tax (think the Earned Income Tax Credit on steroids) would be a much better better idea than having minimum wage laws. It'd do a whole lot to chip away at the black economy and make employers have less reason to hire illegal immigrants.

[Shi Huangdi]

Its not that simple. You can't treat labor like any other commodity, it doesn't obey the standard laws of supply and demand the way that say bananas do.

Well to extent it is. If labor becomes more expensive, then theory predicts less incentive to higher workers. The question is how much theory is correct, on this the empirical evidence is mixed.

[Berzerker]

That's correct, and so it's a judgement we have to make if the living standards increased by a minimum wage is worth a number of people spending a longer time unemployed.

For people without jobs their standard of living goes down, not just the unemployed but people who are retired. This all comes down to the proposition that a group of politicians can make wiser decisions about how to interfere in the marketplace than everyone who consumes and produces - the alleged wisdom of a few politicians compared to the billions of economic decisions we all make every day. This is the inherent problem with command economies... Our combined wisdom surpasses that of a ruling elite...

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi


Well to extent it is. If labor becomes more expensive, then theory predicts less incentive to higher workers. The question is how much theory is correct, on this the empirical evidence is mixed.

The theory is crap. Its more complicated then that. You can create a supply and demand curves with labor like you can with inanimate commodities.

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by Boshko

The theory is crap. Its more complicated then that. You can create a supply and demand curves with labor like you can with inanimate commodities.

How so?

If workers become less expensive, isn't it now easier to hire more of them? If the wage rate goes up, isn't there now more incentive to being working then there was previously?

[Imran Siddiqui]

And do you think that theory is crap when dealing with capital as well? Of course real life is complicated. The theory is a simplification in order to allow study.

[One_Mean_Rabbit]

I fail to see how you're looking at it in a real sense

Because I see it from his likely point of view, not my own emotional one. Realistically, he won't give a flip what the motive was, so it is net good. Doubly so figuring the donator saved money at the same time!