561–570 of 776 posts
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> the law Notice how they used the law to prevent the free market from operating. They had to use the law because the free market did work around it.
Wealth, as Mr. Hobbes says, is power. Ibid., Book 1, Chapter 5.
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But it's okay to have a national minimum wage and also a state, county or city minimum wage that's higher than the national. That doesn't mean we shouldn't at least start with the national one. Individual areas can fight for their own raised minimum wage in their area. Everyone can fight for the national one, which would still be a big increase over what minimum wages are everywhere.
>But it's okay to have a national minimum wage and also a state, county or city minimum wage that's higher than the national. That doesn't mean we shouldn't at least start with the national one. You won't get any argument about that from me. My point was that, except in the poorest places in the US, $15/hour is not a living wage. Especially since many, if not most folks earning the minimum wage don't get health care…
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Every job that pays more than minimum wage is evidence that workers do have negotiating power.
You are greatly oversimplifying in response to paragraphs. Please expand on your point.
The direct effect of the minimum wage is to make certain low-productivity jobs illegal . Consider that for a moment: a person with limited skills and/or needs is simply prohibited from doing low-productivity work regardless of desire. The counter-argument is that many workers do not have a choice; they will always accept wages vs nothing, but have no power or ability to negotiate. With a minimum wage we've made the d…
https://www.employment.govt.nz/hours-and-wages/pay/minimum-w...
> Textbooks state that, in the absence of a minimum wage, a worker is paid his “marginal product of labour”, which means the value of what he produces. > Just as a monopolist can set prices higher than would be the case in a competitive market, a monopsonist can set prices artificially lower. A lot of economic arguments forget these ideas. The labor market is not a free market: companies have more power in negotiatio…
>> Textbooks state that, in the absence of a minimum wage, a worker is paid his “marginal product of labour”, which means the value of what he produces. This sentence is just wrong. First of all a rational actor will not intentionally pay a worker the value of their production; you get no profit. Textbooks actually say that a worker will be paid no more than the marginal product of labor, and if labor is in short sup…
The more research i do in economics the less impressed i am with the discipline. Economics is defined as a social science. That point never really struck home with me until recently. I think the fancy models, the cutting edge statistics and clever use of logic blinded me to the fact that the entire discipline is built on top of stories. There’s no gravity, there’s no absolute zero, there’s no kilogram. There’s no fun…
All disciplines studying complex systems like societies down to something like the human body, simply do not have the luxury of absolute truths like in mathematics or even the ability to run experiments like in physics (often for ethical reasons, e.g., in medicine or economics). But does that mean that it is not worth doing? For these fundamental reasons economics is “hard”, but I argue that it is still worth doing b…
This is the case for some other social sciences as well, but I have the impression it's (much) worse for economics. The effects are certainly a lot more impactful.
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The issue is that nobody is entitled to anything. You aren't de facto entitled to receiving money for any services you may or may not provide, regardless of whether you're skilled or not, just because you exist. A company exists because one or more people risked wealth in order to create a net positive system - their existence is not as riskless as one would believe.
> The issue is that nobody is entitled to anything. That's an ideological statement. You may subscribe to it, but not everyone has to. Society is fundamentally based on the notion of shared rights and duties, what these rights and duties entail can be up for debate, but if you don't want to owe anyone, you will have to live a pretty lonely, primitive existance in Siberia or Alaska.
As a result, I can consider a libertarian to be genocidal. For they would be mostly fine with a Holodomor.
Look i get that USA has a lot of billionaires and the GDP per capita looks great for the USA but I want US citizens to please take a look at median wealth per adult and see how far you have to scroll down to find the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe... This is a great way to rule out outliers. My home country Australia has 3X the median wealth per adult of the USA. This is similar to…
Does that take into account cost of living? In America you can buy a gallon of milk for $1.50 at Walmart. In Australia (after some brief googling[0]) it's more like $4.50. Same with gas, video games, you name it, a lot of things seem to cost 2-4x more in Australia. [0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?cou...
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The labor market is a free market. If you don't agree the employer offer is fair, you don't have to accept. When you find a better offer, you go to the better offer. As for minimum wage, it is hurting the unskilled workers, like high school students, college students who are looking for experience. If you are stuck in a minimum wage job, then this is what the market is paying for your skill set. If you think you wort…
> you don't have to accept. When you find a better offer, you go to the better offer. What if there aren't better offers? > As for minimum wage, it is hurting the unskilled workers, like high school students, college students who are looking for experience. The article shows that there isn't conclusive evidence pointing to employment destruction with minimum wage increases. > If you think you worth more, then proof i…
We must always understand the implication of Libertarian statements. They expect the poor to die when they can't afford shelter, food, or water. Or unless someone else besides them has mercy or compassion.
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Wealth, as Mr. Hobbes says, is power. Ibid., Book 1, Chapter 5.
Other people say power comes out of the barrel of a gun.
Who buys and sells those guns? Using what currency? And do you really want to kick the hornets' nest of slaver repressions, traders, anti-union violence, including multiple open wars, range wars, the Johnson County War, the Great Potato Famine, Opium War, British occupation of India, China, Egypt, Palestine, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? All in the name of commerce and markets.
I'll let you find the passages in Smith yourself where he talks of the joint-stock-company created and operated garrisons in India, Africa, and the Americas.
And just to preempt a likely upcoming reference to Weber, his famous [hrase has three conditions, not one: it conerns the monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
Absent government, what is lost isn't violence, but the monopoly on legitimacy. Ony entity that succeeds in reimposing that monopoly is by the definition a government, and absent monopoly or legitimacy what remains is illegitimate and/or multiparty violence.
(A nominal government itself may lose its claim to legitimacy, as recent public protests in the US and elsewhere have suggested).
You've managed to have numerous horses shot from under you with no apparent grieving on your part in this exchange. In sympathy with the horses, I think I've pursued this as far as I care to.
But you might care to examine your premises and their foundations a bit more carefully.