Secession Talk...

[Crissa]

We wouldn't want anyone to pay taxes according to their control of the nation's income, or anything.

Oh, it's much more important to tax that portion of income that people need for things like their primary home, healthcare, food, clothes... Than the portion of their income they spend on extra homes, private jet planes and yachts.

I mean, 'cause it's totally more of an imposition to tax people on their wants than their needs.

</sarcasm>

-Crissa

[Lich-Loved]

Depends on context LL. Last I checked, Obama was talking tax changes that shifted our weird regressive-through-loopholes tax structure back towards the progressive one that we decided long ago that we wanted, and built our current system to be (but failed at). That's just a return to the capitalism that the country was built on, as espoused by Adam Smith, author of that silly "Wealth of Nations" treatise. If that counts as class warfare, I'm at a loss as to how, and doubly confused by the source of the idea.

Well, this Congressional Budget Office chart shows that currently the taxes in the US are paid progressively. More telling is the IRS data (you will need to pull the Individual Complete Report (Publication 1304), Table 3.5 for 2006). This table shows that those making over $100,000 in 2006 paid 71% of the total taxes despite the fact they are only 15% of the households filing taxes. Now you can call the statement "people aren't paying their fair share" a lot of things, but to think that it is not misleading, inaccurate, and designed to inflame one class against the other is crap reasoning.

Progressive taxes affect the wealthy more than the non-wealthy. I think the IRS data (if nothing else) shows we already have a progressive tax system. Now, one can argue that the rich should be paying even more by closing loopholes or just being punitive about it, but then we are no longer talking about fairness, we are talking about wealth redistribution or some other topic. I am quite sure Obama has access to these figures, yet you don't hear him providing these figures publicly. There is a reason for that and it is the same reason the Right has when they screw over the Left with their version of rhetoric.

Frankly, the entire topic is designed to keep the Left (in this case, though there are similar arguments made by the Right) busy being pissed off at the Right so that those in power can stay in power and collect the huge bribes from businesses and special interest groups of all persuasions for putting favorable legislation into place. Look at how you and I are bantering back in forth instead of working together to make a real difference. Maybe we can pass legislation to limit terms to 2 terms in local government, 1 in state and one national term in a lifetime and stop the concept of career politics. Maybe we could demand true campaign finance reform. Maybe we could work together to stop earmarks and the bullshit anonymous holds. But why would anyone want to focus on the real problem when there is so much to hate about the Other Side, right?

Yeah, I wish we could return to the the founding principles of our country. Both the Left and the Right could use it.

[TarkisFlux]

I can't be bothered to go find statistics or actual quotes in favor of my position, but anecdotal evidence and testimony by Warren Buffet and others among the super extra rich suggests they pay a smaller percentage of their income (approx 15%) than those in the 50-100k range (approx 30%). I will point out that you can hide those sorts of numbers in the CBO report, given the way they're chosen to do their breakdowns it's impossible to tell, but not press the point further since I lack enough data to reinforce or abandon the position.

And I'll pass on picking up the larger political debate for now.

[Lich-Loved]

TarkisFlux: Sounds fine. I am sure there are issues with the info I presented and everyone knows how the numbers can be twisted to suit purposes. I do not claim moral or any other superiority in presenting them, and do so only to mention that there is at least more than one way of looking at the issue. I also recall hearing Buffet talk about what you mention. Interesting stuff, to be sure, and yet more proof that whatever it is that anyone is telling us, we better not trust it overmuch.

From my point of view, it doesn't matter whether one is Left, Right, Libertarian, Communist, Socialist or some other -ist, we are all in this together against the established government. Until we can break the stranglehold of the status quo (and I think Obama may actually try to do that to a degree, just maybe), we are not going to be able to get any real change in place.

My 2cp. Thanks for the chat.

[Crissa]

There's lots of ways to looking at the tax burden. However, in the US we actually have four layers of taxes upon our income.

State taxes, which are mostly sales tax, which are regressive enough before you include regressive income taxes like in southern states;

Payroll taxes, which everyone pays but don't see - employers have to pay them. Since these top out at a certain point, they are also very regressive.

Income tax, which is progressive - that means under a certain income, you pay nothing, maybe get something back up to a maximum of 36%. Since each part of your income is charged at a different rate, three is no point at which earning more money (gross) means you take home less pay (net).

And lastly there's a flat tax for anything that's not income. Capital Gains. Since the majority of that if in the fat 1%, it's horribly regressive, because it's taxed at a lower rate than the the median income tax.

Which means, altogether, we have a slightly progressive tax system, where the top 0.1% actually pay less taxes each than the top 20%, but the rest of the way it's progressive.

I might also point out that, for instance, my spouse and I are in the upper 10%. And yet, we paid 6% extra taxes last year than a similar family. Such is the 'freedom' that the right-wing would like to buy us.

-Crissa

[Draco_Argentum]

I can sortof agree with LL's claim that both sidess main parties are fuckbags who need a kick in the nads. Perhaps US tax is a poor example, I don't know enough. But I can always bring up internet censorship in Australia. The Liberals put the current secret censorship in place when they were in power, opposed by Labour. Now Labour is in power and proposing even more censorship and the Liberals are opposing.

At least here the minor parties aren't as heavily punished in the lower house and are given a decent chance at getting into the senate.

[Username17]

And yet while there are many things that suck about society, the fact of the matter is that human society of today is, in industrialized countries, better than it has ever been in history. Lots of stuff would be better if it was radically changed, and I myself am very much classified as a radical by most people. But you can't lose sight of the forest for the trees here. Despite everything that is wrong with our governments and our economic systems, we still have it very good.

While I would want to change many things, and I would totally sympathize with some who would use violence to achieve those changes, I wouldn't trade our government and society for nothing (that way lies Somalia). And I wouldn't trade our government and society even for our own from a hundred years past.

There is a seemingly insurmountable mountain of progress that should be made. And the fact that it isn't done already is a travesty that we should be ashamed of. But stop for a moment and look around you. Look at the past. The mountains of progress already made probably seemed insurmountable to the serfs owned by the literal royalty of the time we now know as "then."

A few weeks back I was walking around in Karlstejn castle. It was the seat of power of the Holy Roman Empire back in its day. It was... sad. While large for a house of even modern standards, Emperor Karl didn't have indoor plumbing. Or lights. He went through four wives in his days because healthcare was essentially nonexistent - even for the Emperor and Emissary of God. Progress is real. And we have a lot of it in our pants right now.

We're arguing that people shouldn't be impeding or censoring discussion on the internet. And we're right. But take a step back for a moment: holy shit, we have the internet! In every generation there are always people who want to oppose positive change and even roll it back to a scenario in which things sucked. But the existence of reactionary forces, even reactionary forces embedded in all walks of life and centers of power, does not mean that progress has not been made. Nor does it mean that progress will not continue to be made.

Humanity can be pushed backward yes. The disciples of Paul burned down the libraries of Rome and destroyed Europe's ability to make bridges and provide running water to its people. But the existence of that very real threat does not mean that you should rise up and burn everything down. Indeed, it is precisely that sort of "burn everything and start fresh" attitude that created all the dark ages in human history.

-Username17

[Lich-Loved]

I would like to build off points in Frank's excellent post. First, I want to clarify that I am not a Nihilist. I don't want to destroy our government, just truly return it back to the people and out of the hands of the special interest groups of all stripes. This is why I am against all of this secession talk, since secession is just another form of destroying the union we have built.

Secondly, Frank is right that we have made a huge amount of progress. We also live in a time of transition that many people may not realize and this time of transition is the cause of some of the divisiveness between the Left and the Right in the US. This takes a moment to explain, so bear with me. Basically, 150-200 years ago or so (prior to the Industrial Revolution) the common uneducated man was a subsistence farmer, individual artisan or perhaps a shopkeeper of some kind. The common man toiled in obscurity for the most part. Farmers in Oklahoma and Texas, for example, lived in sod huts then and continued to do so into the Dust Bowl years in the 1930's, to put things in perspective. It was not pleaseant to be uneducated. When the Industrial Revolution came along, it tapped into this underutilized labor pool and paid a wage in exchange for the common man's repetitive labor. However, it wasn't until mass production came along (as epitomized by the Ford auto plant though the concept existed during the Industrial Revolution) that the common, uneducated man could be pressed into service en masse. Unionization struggled along to keep up with the revolution in production and eventually reached a peak (at least in the US) in the 1960's and 1970's. The combination of unions and mass production had a tremendous effect on the common, uneducated man in the US. In the brief period from 1850 onward or so, especially in the critical years of 1930 through the present of which many people are still alive in the US, the common man had the ability to afford a lifestyle far beyond anything the common man had ever achieved since people started painting on cave walls. Virtually every person alive today in the US was born and grew up during this unprecedented rise of the common man. Every year, the common, uneducated man could expect to do better than his father. Technology, wages, worker protections and the like have always risen and even the poorest people in the US are far, far away from the sod huts of their forefathers just 150 years ago, if that long.

The problem is that just as the world changed during the Industrial Revolution, there is another revolution going on. I am not sure of its formal name. Some call it Post-industrialism, and others Globalization. The point is, that where mass production met unionization, the common man was able to trade his two hands and strong back for a standard of living that these accoutrements never provided him before. Thanks to globalization, the common man with a strong back now no longer needs to live in the same country where his goods are delivered. This means that the common man living in the US is now competing with 6 billion other strong-backed men for wages. Having a pair of hands, a strong back and no skills will no longer buy you anything in the marketplace. It used to, and many think it should because for about 100 years or so it did in the US, but those jobs are going away and are never coming back. For a period of about 100 years, the common, unskilled man had a boom of sorts where his very presence meant a standard of living far beyond anything that has ever happened before. That is simply no longer the case. Trying to return to that time of 40 years ago is a bullshit exercise in futility. Things are never going to be the same for the common man and he is is a state of decline back to his roots in the US and elsewhere and will remain in a state of decline until his wages and benefits reflect the global average wage.

The Left in the US wants to somehow turn back the clock and return to the time when a pair of hands meant a tremendously high standard of living compared to any other point in history. They want to put Globalization "back in the bottle". It is never going away and trying to do this is just as futile and just as damaging to society as trying to avoid the Industrial Revolution. Now the Right sees this huge global labor pool and weak environmental laws elsewhere and has essentially tried to turn the clock back to the pre-union days where corporations could abuse their workforce and the environment with impunity, though now they do it offshore. Once again, neither the Left nor the Right in the US is actually doing what needs to be done. The Left spends its efforts denigrating the "eeeeevilll corporations" (despite the fact that without corporatization in support of mass manufacturing the common man would be living the same nightmare he always has in history) and the entrepreneurial system that in part fueled the Industrial Revolution and lead to the innovations the common man enjoys today. The Right is simply profit taking, using their expertise in labor management to provide maximum benefit to their shareholders. This means that the common man elsewhere who is still living in sod huts is getting screwed because we know a helluva lot more about workforce management than the average worker in the host country and the workers are not yet protected like they are in the US.

So, once again, those of us that actually want to see real problems solved should stop buying into the protectionism and class warfare of the Left and should demand better treatment (higher wages, better working conditions) of foreign workers and foreign environments from the Right. I could list all kinds of changes we should be demanding out of the Right and the Left, but my main point has been made and this post is already long enough.

[PhoneLobster]

I think you have some odd ideas about what Globalization. Indeed text book crazy ideas about it.

Frank may be right about making progress. But in certain fields, like economics, we have been certain places before and we HAVE (within living memory) gone backwards. And forwards, and backwards.

Globilization HAS happened before back before world war 2 the world economy was largely "globalized". It fell into a great depression in much the same way we are falling into something similar now for basically identical reasons. It did not return to a similar level of globalization until around the 1980s.

And it is important to not the REASONS the great depression, and the new one, happened are because of lack of traditional leftist policies like regulation, social welfare and good god even protectionism!

Globalization is also not exactly what you describe it to be. Globalized trade is not the same as globalized union busting, but you mistake it for that.

Globalized trade does NOT require the removal of sensible protectionist measures that protect us from famine and sudden massive spikes in prices of basic living expenses.

Globalization has no connection with the removal of sensible regulation and various welfare and public works that significantly help both create wealth and prevent destructive economic upheaval.

Crazy fucking right wing lunatics call those things Globalization in an attempt to rebrand failed and unpopular policies.

People in general now dislike the word Globalization specifically because of that, because those things, are steps backward rather than advancements for humanity And it is pretty obvious to the god damn majority of the planet's population that these are step backwards and that the weak cover story is a total cosmetic farce.

But then, you seem keen on drinking the insano koolaid what with lines like this...

should stop buying into the protectionism and class warfare of the Left and should demand better treatment (higher wages, better working conditions) of foreign workers

Do you realize the amount of intellectual dissonance in that statement?

"Fucking left wing and their insane demands for worker protection, if they had any kind of integrity they would be demanding worker protection"

Stop drinking the koolaid.

[Lich-Loved]

Globalization is also not exactly what you describe it to be. Globalized trade is not the same as globalized union busting, but you mistake it for that.

Globalized trade does NOT require the removal of sensible protectionist measures that protect us from famine and sudden massive spikes in prices of basic living expenses.

Globalization has no connection with the removal of sensible regulation and various welfare and public works that significantly help both create wealth and prevent destructive economic upheaval.

I am not sure where you are getting any of this. No where do I make any claims like this. And whether you acknowledge it or not, this "globalization of the workforce" is driving the inflated wages of the uneducated downward in the US. The fact that you don't like it doesn't mean it isn't happening. All your bitching about, in the end, is semantics. So, since you are hung up on semantics, let me better define the terms I am using. While I use Globalization in my post above, I preface that by saying that the change we are undergoing now is sometimes called Globalization. I call it that because I don't have a good word for it, and if my use of the word differs from your definition than I apologize for not coming up with a better word. Regardless, I think I make claims that we should be using this whatever-it-is time of change to improve workers rights and environmental protection globally, not bust unions or tear down regulation which is hardly what you are imputing my point to be.

People in general now dislike the word Globalization specifically because of that, because those things, are steps backward rather than advancements for humanity And it is pretty obvious to the god damn majority of the planet's population that these are step backwards and that the weak cover story is a total cosmetic farce.

So, you believe that now that America has its common laborer out of mud huts, we can say screw the world? Yeah let's put up protectionist policies and kill NAFTA and all that so that American workers can get their ridiculously overcompensated jobs back! Who cares that people in China or India or Mexico go back to living in a shithole with no light at the end of the tunnel. Niiiiice. This is where the Left is at. They want this bullshit "mythical workers rights" but they want it to happen while Joe Dumbass gets to keep his job at the sandpaper plant making $22 an hour with free healthcare when his actual value on the global market is currently one tenth of that. Oh and better yet, they want the long-run economic impossibility of having every uneducated worker with two arms making that same wage. What I am saying is that this global change in labor (that I perhaps mislabeled as Globalization) is first not going to stop just because we want it to and second can be made into a force of positive change in places where it can lift people out of subsistence-level poverty and set their countries on the road to prosperity. If it is done right and ethically, that is. This is where the Right is failing, with sweatshops and environmental abuse, they are holding foreign workers down and preventing the wage from rising as it should simply because they can. This policy has to stop and we need to truly invest in foreign countries rather than pillage them for their labor pool.

"Fucking left wing and their insane demands for worker protection, if they had any kind of integrity they would be demanding worker protection"

When I speak about the Left's protectionist policies, I am talking about protections for the overcompensated, common US worker. The protections I am advocating for are for worker safety globally and a proper working wage for the skill level required globally. This means that the global wage needs to rise. I want that, I argue for that. What it means though is that the average shmoe shlepping boxes up and down a ladder for $10 an hour in the US is a dinosaur that is going to go back to living on the global wage for the going rate of "strong back, arms and legs", and only by raising the global wage, improving education worldwide, insisting on sound environmental and energy policy worldwide, reducing worldwide famine and disease and a host of other things Americans take for granted for some stupid reason can the US worker hope to maintain any semblance of his standard of living in the long run. I also say, which I guess you find appalling, is that if one has no meaningful education and no meaningful skills, then no matter where you are in the world, even in the precious US, your wage is going to suck because there are billions and billions of people out there like that right now willing and able to do the same job you are doing. I want to solve that by making smarter workers, industrializing other countries that want industrialization using our years of experience to benefit the common worker there. By definition then, their wages will rise and US wages will fall until an equilibrium is reached.

A comedian once said something along the lines of "I live in the Southwest US. I see these Mexicans coming over the boarder, climbing out of the back of pickup trucks... unwashed, no shirt, no shoes, no teeth, doesn't speak the language. If that guy can do your job, you are in the wrong fucking career, pal".

[Gelare]

My god, I'm stunned. It's been so long since I've seen someone around here use actual economic theory and - dare I say it - facts (in the form of official reports with real data) to support their viewpoints on economics, I'd nearly forgotten what it looked like.

A comedian once said something along the lines of "I live in the Southwest US. I see these Mexicans coming over the boarder, climbing out of the back of pickup trucks... unwashed, no shirt, no shoes, no teeth, doesn't speak the language. If that guy can do your job, you are in the wrong fucking career, pal".

QFT.

[PhoneLobster]

Lich loved, you are an idiot.

What it means though is that the average shmoe shlepping boxes up and down a ladder for $10 an hour in the US is a dinosaur that is going to go back to living on the global wage

You believe that people working the minimum wage, in the US one of the countries where being at the bottom of the economic ladder means serious working poverty needs to drop in work standards to meet some sort of global ideal and indeed the global ideal should be set somewhere below your incredibly low standards?

That is NOT arguing for protecting workers rights world wide, that is arguing for creating a world wide slave fucking labor force, unsurprising since you are using all the fake globalization language of the typical right wing "fuck the workers" fanatic.

You continue to criticize the idea of protecting workers rights unless all workers rights are protected, but what you are actually doing is trying to justify destroying workers rights in the only arena your immediate audience has any actual direct power over them.

What the heck? Should your US pals all just migrate to Vietnam, become citizens, vote in new government, politically agitate and improve labor laws there. Then you can complain about them being localized and failing to improve US labor conditions and justify busting their Vietnamese unions with the same double standard bullshit.

Fucking moron.

[Lich-Loved]

Let me guess, Phone Lobster - strong back, weak mind? Apparently...

The reason global wages can't rise above some threshold for tasks a fucking monkey could do is that we could actually hire fucking monkeys to do it. The only reason many manual labor jobs have not been automated is that labor is still cheap enough to not warrant the move. You can't go around the world raising wages arbitrarily; if the costs exceed putting a fucking robot in place to do the job, then they will put a fucking robot in to do the job. I know, I have seen it and done it myself and seen the workers laid off as a result. It is happening all the time.

The common, uneducated "pick up bricks and move them" guy has always been an economic slave except for a very brief flash of time over the last 100 years. You somehow think that the current situation is magically going to continue for ever. It isn't. The only hope the average person has is to become skilled enough to design, install, and service the machines that will replace useless manual labor. That is why I am for global education of the workforce. I fully understand that this means that people that cannot do shitall except press a color button when another colored button tells them to will be radically underemployed around the world. I hope we can work together to prevent this from happening. How is any plan you have (and I would guess you have one, so let's hear it) going to do that?

[PhoneLobster]

Let me guess, Phone Lobster - strong back, weak mind? Apparently...

I hold a degree like everyone else and your cousin you right wing asshole.

The reason global wages can't rise above some threshold for tasks a fucking monkey could do is that we could actually hire fucking monkeys to do it.

Your sympathy and understanding of the working classes is boundless.

You can't go around the world raising wages arbitrarily

Yes you fucking can. That's what caused the "100 years" of prosperity you are talking about, unions, welfare and god damn protectionism. It's documented. It's fact. It's what pulled us out of the great depression. It's the very strategy being implemented right now in desperation to fix the problems largely caused by departing from such sensible and proven economic policies.

As for the "dread" creep of automation... it's not nearly as bad as you pretend. Or even what you pretend. Here in advanced automated countries we oddly do not actually lack low skilled jobs, indeed we lack and import low skilled labor forces. Funny that? It's like there are vast fields of labor that just plain can't be automated and as if the extra wealth created by industry becoming more efficient through automation actually creates a larger economy with more jobs... I wonder how that happened?

In reality when you automate a car production line and the workers are forced to go and trim peoples hedges they lose money not because you have "kicked a bunch of monkeys out of monkey labor and into THE FUTURE" but because they have been removed from the protections and benefits of a well unionized industry and set adrift in the wilds of poorly unionized industry.

You somehow think that the current situation is magically going to continue for ever. It isn't. The only hope the average person has is to become skilled enough to design, install, and service the machines that will replace useless manual labor.

Either automation is destroying jobs or it isn't. You are arguing BOTH.

If it magically destroys net jobs it doesn't mater WHAT your new skills set is, there are no new fucking jobs magically pushing buttons, or at least, not nearly enough. And the machine servicers, under a force of vast seething unemployed will become slave laborers themselves.

If it doesn't magically destroy jobs it isn't a damn problem of "retraining" it's the same problem there always was, workers rights. It's the same workers, same damn labor pool, same damn demand, same damn employers. But you want to destroy all regulation and protection of workers rights because as long as your right wing allies have succeeded in destroying them ANYWHERE it is "unfair" to have them HERE (wherever here is).

Heck in the inevitable destruction of jobs scenario might I add, the entire fucking capitalist economic model collapses into anarchy. So good luck with your "inevitable future" on that one.

I hope we can work together to prevent this from happening. How is any plan you have (and I would guess you have one, so let's hear it) going to do that?

Welfare, unions, protectionism. Proven policies with massive economic and social benefits. But since your entire speil is a ridiculous self contradictory attack on those institutions you don't intend to work with anyone except those greedy idiots who want to loot the public economy for their own private gain and need useful fools to spout their propaganda smoke screen.

[imperialspectre]

Welfare, unions, protectionism. Proven policies with massive economic and social benefits. But since your entire speil is a ridiculous self contradictory attack on those institutions you don't intend to work with anyone except those greedy idiots who want to loot the public economy for their own private gain and need useful fools to spout their propaganda smoke screen.

I'm down with unions and social welfare programs, but it seems to me that all you can accomplish via protectionism is keeping our economy and workers safe while we let the rest of the world rot. Additionally, countries like Denmark have wide-open trade policies while simultaneously enjoying high standards of living and protecting their workforce. Finally, when free trade agreements are written properly, they can include labor and environmental guarantees that both protect our workforce while encouraging much better labor standards in the other country involved.

What specifically does a protectionist economic policy get us that we can't get any other way?

[Lich-Loved]

All you have shown here is that you can flig crap like any other monkey. Bravo.

Oh if the workers around the world UNIONIZE NOW!!1!!! then all would be just like it was 100 years ago and we will all live happily ever after. *dreamy sigh*

There is a plan, alright. Let em ask you, how is it working out for you so far, huh? Oh wait, let me guess, the eeeeeeevilll corporations are holding the good man down. Let's screw em so they *have* to accept whatever it is you are putting out. Unionize, prevent automation! Stop layoffs! Don't allow automated plants to be built! And if you do get laid off and have to trim hedges then hell, UNIONIZE there too! And then, people will have to pay $22 an hour to have their hedges cut! That's a hell of a plan, no way that could go wrong. While you are at it, maybe you can dismantle capitalism, corporations and entrepreneurship and kill the only thing that has brought a true change to the everyday life of the common person in 7000+ years of human history.

As for automation creating net jobs, it will. It will create other kinds of jobs though. More schools will be needed to teach more workers since we are woefully short of skilled labor. And more schools mean more construction and more trained teachers. And everyone will need to eat, so there are jobs there, and maybe the newly prosperous want health care, so we need even more automated plants to produce the materials these new hospitals will need, and these places will want doctors and nurses and equipment that will in turn need to be sold and serviced and installed. These people and plants will need good clean power, so there are jobs there, and they will want a few luxuries so they can relax when not working, so there will be jobs there. Where there won't be jobs is for people that ultimately can do none of these things. Right now, far too few people in the world can do these things and worse yet we aren't even moving in the right direction. The Right (of which I am absolutely not a part of) are simply taking advantage of the low cost of foreign labor and not improving the infrastructure of the host country so the common man stays a peasant his whole life.

You want to rewind the clock because this period of change is beyond your comprehension. Your plan for the future amounts to "Stupid People of the World UNITE! No progress! That'll show em!" and I am the moron? Sheesh.

I think my point has been made and this thread is supposed to be about secession anyway. You will have to play with yourself from now on. I would unionize yourself first, though. I bet your off hand is disenfranchised and growing angry that it is not getting a fair share of the action.

[Gelare]

I'm afraid, PL, that you are basically totally wrong. But I could be mistaken, so I'll go over the parts where you are wrong and the parts where you might be wrong methodically so we can check. This:

I hold a degree like everyone else and your cousin you right wing asshole.

And this:

Your sympathy and understanding of the working classes is boundless.

Are not real points in any sense of the word, so we can move on.

You can't go around the world raising wages arbitrarily

Yes you fucking can. That's what caused the "100 years" of prosperity you are talking about, unions, welfare and god damn protectionism. It's documented. It's fact.

On this point, you may be right. I don't think you are, since "union" is a code word for "monopoly", which absolutely reduces the welfare of a society. Protectionism has failed over and over and over again to make positive impacts, and is primarily a tool for graft; it also absolutely reduces welfare both domestically and abroad. But if what you say is documented, is fact, then I must, in all fairness, give you a chance to produce these documents. Please do so or be full of shit.

Here in advanced automated countries we oddly do not actually lack low skilled jobs, indeed we lack and import low skilled labor forces.

This is actually very true: congratulations. Here in advanced, automated countries, we import low skilled labor forces because we can pay them below minimum wage. Everyone knows that minimum wage laws actually hurt the poor, which used to be a problem, but since now we can employ illegal immigrants and, better yet, outsource to places where we can pay literally pennies on the dollar, it's not a big deal anymore.

In reality when you automate a car production line and the workers are forced to go and trim peoples hedges they lose money not because you have "kicked a bunch of monkeys out of monkey labor and into THE FUTURE" but because they have been removed from the protections and benefits of a well unionized industry and set adrift in the wilds of poorly unionized industry.

This...I'm sorry...this really doesn't have any meaning. At all. Bearing in mind that union is a code word for "monopoly", you have taken the workers out of an industry where they were restricting supply (of labor) to raise wages above their competitive levels and generating deadweight (welfare) loss in the process, and stuck them back in the labor market where they can reallocate themselves to some purpose where they can actually earn their marginal product and restore economic efficiency. Plus you've made the original manufacturing more efficient (read: cheaper) by instituting robots, which happened to be the low-cost (read: economically desirable) solution.

Either automation is destroying jobs or it isn't. You are arguing BOTH.

That's because it is both, and if you fail to grasp that, you can't really contribute meaningfully to any discussion on economics. When jobs are lost in one place, there is a surplus of available labor, and new jobs will open up to accomodate. Often this involves retraining, which is fine. Your ideas about workers' rights:

If it doesn't magically destroy jobs it isn't a damn problem of "retraining" it's the same problem there always was, workers rights.

are completely meaningless. Like, they actually mean nothing at all. Because contrary to what you say here:

It's the same workers, same damn labor pool, same damn demand, same damn employers. But you want to destroy all regulation and protection of workers rights because as long as your right wing allies have succeeded in destroying them ANYWHERE it is "unfair" to have them HERE (wherever here is).

It's not the same. The economy is always changing, with new jobs, new fields, new technologies opening up new possibilities. Workers don't need your bullshit protectionist policies, what they need is a well-functioning economy, such that innovators and entrepreneurs can devise new jobs to better use the talents of these workers. Better yet, maybe the workers can become these entrepeneurs themselves, to better put their talents to use. If they have that, everyone - literally everyone, your workers included - is better off.

Heck in the inevitable destruction of jobs scenario might I add, the entire fucking capitalist economic model collapses into anarchy. So good luck with your "inevitable future" on that one.

This is also meaningless.

Welfare, unions, protectionism. Proven policies with massive economic and social benefits.

There is, as I say, a small chance you may be right on this point, so I request that you produce this proof you keep talking about. Until you do, the only reasonable assumption is that you're totally wrong.

[Crissa]

Actually, there's a difference between protectionism and pro-unionism.

If you can pay someone a lower wage in another counter to produce shoes... That means nothing unless those shoes are allowed to be imported back into the country.

In other words, there is no reason we have to accept their low standards, which is what we do when we allow their products be imported back into our country. They are employed with our dollars.

And no, we cannot do this as individual consumers - because an industry is a collectivized force, for which the economy of scale works for. For every pair of shoes I buy from a local producer, it goes less and less far for that producer than for the one which is using slave labor.

And that's why we need organized labor, and require job safety and labor laws be equivalent in our trade partners.

-Crissa

PS: Mass production has nothing to do with globalization. The cheap access to oil and telecommunications is how globalization works. It happened in the 1920s, it happened at times long past under Roman rule and Egyptian, long strings of trade stretching across vast distances because they could.

[PhoneLobster]

Everyone knows that minimum wage laws actually hurt the poor

Holy fucking shit.

This undead masturbatory fantasy guy I can talk to.

You Gelare are a downright deluded psycho ignoramus.

Lich Loved buying into "uniform justice for all or uniform injustice for all, no middle ground HUZZAH!" is one thing, buying into THAT delusion requires multiple generations of indoctrination, probably involving a lump hammer applied directly and forcefully to the cranium throughout childhood.

Expect me to just ignore your ranted fantasies until the end of time.

[Crissa]

Yeah, it'd be hard to believe minimum wage hurts the poor when countries with minimum wage have higher standards of living for their poor than countries without.

Yeah, certainly you could hire 100 guys for 1% the minimum wage... But that wouldn't increase their standard of living any. So by any measure, how it 'hurts' the poor is hard to discern.

-Crissa

[Gelare]

In other words, there is no reason we have to accept their low standards, which is what we do when we allow their products be imported back into our country. They are employed with our dollars.

You're very right. We do accept their low standards, because we do allow their products to be imported back to our countries, and the reason we do this is because it is cheaper. Now you can certainly make the moral argument that the working conditions are poor and we shouldn't stand for the situation those people are in. Indeed, many people have made this argument at length, although not everyone finds it convincing. But you can't make the economic argument for that.

As for you, PhoneLobster:

If that's the only objection to my post you feel you can support (and you didn't even technically do that, but I'll let that slide for now), you clearly never had any fucking idea what you were talking about, which is, of course, what I suspected all along. Do whatever you like, I really don't care, because your opinions are both wrong and not useful to me.


To anyone who is actually interested as to why I would make a claim so outrageous as minimum wage laws hurting the poor, supporting arguments follow (warning: highly economics intensive, and not really relevant to the thread. If you're not interested, feel free to skip it):

In the economics of a competitive market, the price of something is equal to marginal cost to produce it. In competitive labor markets, the price of an hour of labor is the wage, or wage rate, that the worker is paid, and the marginal cost is equal to the marginal productivity, that is, what the worker can produce with that hour of labor. In other words, people are paid exactly as much as the value of what they produce.

A few comments to address likely objections at this point. One might argue that labor markets are not competitive. This is a fair objection, but mostly incorrect. With the exception of situations like mining towns, where nearly everything is owned by one company, the proliferation of different businesses means that virtually everywhere (in the U.S., since I'm not getting into international stuff here), labor markets are near competitive.

One might also object that business owners have more bargaining power than individual laborers. This is actually partially true. There are more workers than there are owners, so each owner has more market power than any laborer. However, as mentioned previously, there are many, many different businesses and employment opportunities in most given towns, so in the end, even though the business owners have more market power, it's still so close to zero that it doesn't really matter.

So, back to the point. Minimum wage laws can impact you in one of two ways, depending on who you are:

1) You have a marginal product above the minimum wage. You will be paid according to your marginal product. No change.

2) You have a marginal product below the minimum wage. Because employers are forced to pay you more than your marginal product - that is, they would have to pay you more than you would give them - they will not pay you, that is to say, they will not employ you. And if, in the absence of minimum wage laws, you would have had some income at all from some very low wage job, you will now not have that job.

So that's that. Hope someone found it informative.

[Crissa]

Gelare, I would challenge you to find one case where a minimum wage reduced the median standard of living over time, or reduced employment over time, or resulted in a country with more poor people in it.

Since I know that none of those things have ever happened in the real world, your arguments are full of shit, no matter how academically sound they may be.

-Crissa

[Gelare]

Gelare, I would challenge you to find one case where a minimum wage reduced the median standard of living over time, or reduced employment over time, or resulted in a country with more poor people in it.

Since I know that none of those things have ever happened in the real world, your arguments are full of shit, no matter how academically sound they may be.

-Crissa

The reason why at least two of those things have never happened in the real world is contained within my arguments found above. Minimum wage laws would not affect the median income, because the median person in a country is literally the person in the middle, and they always have a wage higher than the minimum wage, which means, as I said, this statistic would not be affected. Nor would it be likely to result in a country with more poor people in it; there would be exactly the same number of poor people, only the ones who had a marginal product less than the minimum wage are now poorer, because they don't have jobs. But the absolute number is the same.

As for reduced employment, that is pretty much the thesis that I claimed, yes. If I feel like it, I'll root around the intarwebs for some supporting data, but odds are I can't be arsed. And since your supporting data was, with all due respect, "this never happened because I said so", I think we have to leave this at unresolved. Anyway, I didn't mean to derail the thread, weren't we talking about...wow, come to think of it, globalization isn't even anywhere in the title. Oops.


EDIT: In fact, I just spent a couple minutes looking around the intarwebs, and discovered that, naturally, the research on whether the minimum wage causes unemployment is inconclusive. Some say yes - some say no. So while I could point you to some studies that support my point, you would be quite right in turning right around to studies that support your point, so I'm really just not going to bother. Feel free to look it up yourself, if you're interested. Since the results are inconclusive out there, they're probably going to be inconclusive in here, so I say we move on.

[Crissa]

Yes, you can't be arsed, but I'll tell you such data to back up your theory doesn't exist.

Why? Because of this book. Here's another review about it. Look up the authors.

Honestly, like I said, your arguments have academic value, but are bullshit in the real world. It's not inconclusive. It's about as inconclusive as global warming... Only kooks and nutters and those in the pocket of big money doubt it.

-Crissa

[Gelare]

*sigh* Didn't I just say I didn't want to get into this? Yes, Crissa, I see your book, and I raise you three studies and a shirt. This is honestly a waste of time, because while your book there was clearly written by some smart guys, so too, I have to assume, was some of the pile of studies like this one or that one or the other one, and if those are disreputable - which, hey, they might well be - there's lots more to choose from. It's the magic of Google.


EDIT: At the very least, if helping the poor is your concern, there are better ways to do it. The minimum wage is secretly a tax on business owners, small and large, anyone who employs folks who would get bumped up by the minimum wage laws. Raising taxes on these folks has the unfortunate side effect of driving them out of business, and all your precious jobs are totally gone. If you think we have a moral obligation to help the poor - and we well may - then help them through the general tax revenues, or some other reasonable way, rather than increasing the burden on the very people who are already employing those you're trying to help.