Oppose Redistribution; Communism and Socialism

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Sand
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06 Sep 2010, 11:42 pm

Rosennoir wrote:
Sand wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
It should be the job of the State to ensure that they get jobs. Every person uses resources and thus every person who can should at least provide for themselves; I see no rational reason why every able-bodied person can't be employed.


And, of course, the establishment of a huge bureaucracy to see to it that each person gets work will itself employ a huge number of people and require taxes to support it. Assuming private industry cannot absorb all the unemployed at a wage which will see to it they have a decent living new enterprises supported by government taxation will have to be established and this in itself will require further taxation. This system was envisioned in the Russian Soviet system and is popularly called communism. It was not noted particularly for its efficiency nor the quality of its output.


Well then it seems the only system which can truly eliminate unemployment is Fascism if what you say is true. We also have computers; I'm sure there could be MANY automated systems in place to automatically correspond with businesses and corresponding local areas with job
offerings for potential employees.


The assumption here is that private industry is in desperate need of employees who somehow are terribly ingenious in avoiding work and are living luxurious and carefree lives on unemployment insurance and some sort of welfare which is dispensing billions of dollars to anybody who happens to take the trouble to apply.
People in deep debt and not receiving earned wages do not spend much beyond absolute necessities. This means there is no market for producing a great deal of goods with no purchasers. That means that industry is capable of producing more than can be sold so they don't produce, or they produce outside the country where the wages do not contribute to the market consumers. Also, automation has made a good many manufacturing employees surplus and they are not needed.
How do you solve that?



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07 Sep 2010, 12:44 am

Sand wrote:
Good point. handn't thought of that. Do you support voluntary taxation then? And are you a Libertarian? You sound it.

I support people's right to voluntarily give their money to whomever they choose. I like to describe myself as a voluntarist, because it has nicer connotations than anarchist (I think less government is better government with none being best). When it comes down to it, government is just a monopoly backed by force. A free market could provide all the same services, and because people would only voluntarily exchange their money for a solution that is acceptable to them, all kinds of people (all with different wants and needs) can all get what they want.

ruveyn wrote:
Collective public goods can not be readily sold. For example National Defense. Who will voluntarily pay for a first rate modern military establishment. And there is the more general problem of the Free Riders. How do you deal with that?

Only those goods that can be produced privately and consumed privately can be sold on the market. National Defense is indivisible and collective in nature. It is either for everyone or for no one.

ruveyn
I would pay for a certain amount of defense (nothing nearly the scope of what we have now, though). If no one is willing to pay for something, then I would be highly skeptical as to whether the benefits of that thing actually outweighed the costs. I imagine national defense would also be much cheaper if privatized.

I hear people bring up this "Free Rider Problem" when talking about reducing the scope of government, but I can't think of a single example of this situation making a service unavailable for those willing to pay. Public radio and privately funded research universities are good examples. Maybe the market will find a way to prevent people from riding for free, maybe it won't, but if it doesn't then a free ride is not necessarily bad. If I plant flowers around my house, that benefits all my neighbors, but it doesn't entitle me to a sum of cash from each of them!

Sand wrote:
Describing a competent engineer or technician who was fired after 30 years on the job because cheaper help could be found in Southeast Asia as a leech is rather nauseating language. Guys over 40 who have been kicked out of a job spend months and years trying to get a decent paying job and huge numbers find no takers. These decent people could, of course on your advice, quietly starve to death or commit suicide or perhaps rob banks but that seems not a good alternative to getting some kind of official help.
Unemployment is caused by minimum wage laws, which are imposed on us by the state. Think about them for what they really do: there are two people, both who chose voluntarily to engage in business because each will benefit from it, and then the state says "No, this transaction cannot happen." We could have 0% involuntary unemployment, and all the people who are currently making above minimum wage would be unaffected by the change. A good first step, which I think would even be politically feasible would be to eliminate the minimum wage and give social security to all the people who make below the minimum wage. As these people who were once dependent on welfare would receive valuable training and experience in the form of their jobs, many would likely become more self-sufficient.



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07 Sep 2010, 12:55 am

mcg, you are extremely naïve in matters of political philosophy and basic economics. In particular:

mcg wrote:
Unemployment is caused by minimum wage laws, which are imposed on us by the state.

This is completely false. Hardly anyone works for minimum wage, for one thing, and unemployment is far too complex an issue for us to blithely say "policy X is responsible."


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Sand
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07 Sep 2010, 1:01 am

mcg wrote:
Sand wrote:
Good point. handn't thought of that. Do you support voluntary taxation then? And are you a Libertarian? You sound it.

I support people's right to voluntarily give their money to whomever they choose. I like to describe myself as a voluntarist, because it has nicer connotations than anarchist (I think less government is better government with none being best). When it comes down to it, government is just a monopoly backed by force. A free market could provide all the same services, and because people would only voluntarily exchange their money for a solution that is acceptable to them, all kinds of people (all with different wants and needs) can all get what they want.

ruveyn wrote:
Collective public goods can not be readily sold. For example National Defense. Who will voluntarily pay for a first rate modern military establishment. And there is the more general problem of the Free Riders. How do you deal with that?

Only those goods that can be produced privately and consumed privately can be sold on the market. National Defense is indivisible and collective in nature. It is either for everyone or for no one.

ruveyn
I would pay for a certain amount of defense (nothing nearly the scope of what we have now, though). If no one is willing to pay for something, then I would be highly skeptical as to whether the benefits of that thing actually outweighed the costs. I imagine national defense would also be much cheaper if privatized.

I hear people bring up this "Free Rider Problem" when talking about reducing the scope of government, but I can't think of a single example of this situation making a service unavailable for those willing to pay. Public radio and privately funded research universities are good examples. Maybe the market will find a way to prevent people from riding for free, maybe it won't, but if it doesn't then a free ride is not necessarily bad. If I plant flowers around my house, that benefits all my neighbors, but it doesn't entitle me to a sum of cash from each of them!

Sand wrote:
Describing a competent engineer or technician who was fired after 30 years on the job because cheaper help could be found in Southeast Asia as a leech is rather nauseating language. Guys over 40 who have been kicked out of a job spend months and years trying to get a decent paying job and huge numbers find no takers. These decent people could, of course on your advice, quietly starve to death or commit suicide or perhaps rob banks but that seems not a good alternative to getting some kind of official help.
Unemployment is caused by minimum wage laws, which are imposed on us by the state. Think about them for what they really do: there are two people, both who chose voluntarily to engage in business because each will benefit from it, and then the state says "No, this transaction cannot happen." We could have 0% involuntary unemployment, and all the people who are currently making above minimum wage would be unaffected by the change. A good first step, which I think would even be politically feasible would be to eliminate the minimum wage and give social security to all the people who make below the minimum wage. As these people who were once dependent on welfare would receive valuable training and experience in the form of their jobs, many would likely become more self-sufficient.


The arrangement that a worker makes is that time is sold to permit him or her for living support including basic necessities such as food and rent and medical care. If a business cannot provide wages sufficient for its workers to live then that business does not deserve to exist.



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07 Sep 2010, 2:47 pm

Orwell wrote:
mcg, you are extremely naïve in matters of political philosophy and basic economics. In particular:
mcg wrote:
Unemployment is caused by minimum wage laws, which are imposed on us by the state.

This is completely false. Hardly anyone works for minimum wage, for one thing, and unemployment is far too complex an issue for us to blithely say "policy X is responsible."

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.

Just out of curiosity, do you support minimum wage laws? If so, why? The fact that hardly anyone works for minimum wage is all more the reason to get rid of it. 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.

I drawed you a graph:
Image

Sand wrote:
The arrangement that a worker makes is that time is sold to permit him or her for living support including basic necessities such as food and rent and medical care. If a business cannot provide wages sufficient for its workers to live then that business does not deserve to exist.
The arrangement that a worker makes is whatever the terms of his contract are (the contract that he voluntarily signed). If someone is working for less than a living wage, then it is because that is BETTER than the next best option.



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07 Sep 2010, 3:18 pm

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?



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07 Sep 2010, 3:35 pm

Almost nobody actually aspires to be leeches. Attacking people who do not work, attacks those who DO work to a far greater degree than giving the former poverty-level income ever did.

Because by forcing people to work, you reduce the bargaining power, because then you force people to do any work available however rubbish it may be. While if they have the option of not working, then the employers have to make the jobs worthwhile, or else none will do them. :twisted: :twisted:



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07 Sep 2010, 3:48 pm

Cliffracerslayer wrote:
Almost nobody actually aspires to be leeches. Attacking people who do not work, attacks those who DO work to a far greater degree than giving the former poverty-level income ever did.

Because by forcing people to work, you reduce the bargaining power, because then you force people to do any work available however rubbish it may be. While if they have the option of not working, then the employers have to make the jobs worthwhile, or else none will do them. :twisted: :twisted:


Employers don't care whether their labor considers the work "worthwhile", but they will certainly remove you from their employment if you say that it isn't "worthwhile".



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07 Sep 2010, 4:00 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Cliffracerslayer wrote:
Almost nobody actually aspires to be leeches. Attacking people who do not work, attacks those who DO work to a far greater degree than giving the former poverty-level income ever did.

Because by forcing people to work, you reduce the bargaining power, because then you force people to do any work available however rubbish it may be. While if they have the option of not working, then the employers have to make the jobs worthwhile, or else none will do them. :twisted: :twisted:


Employers don't care whether their labor considers the work "worthwhile", but they will certainly remove you from their employment if you say that it isn't "worthwhile".


Unless you make the benefits overly rosy (which no government could afford to do making it an empty complaint), then there is no conflict of interest between the non-working and the working here.

If it is possible to have a reasonable life without working, then those who are employing have to make working preferable to not working, which means better pay and better conditions, even if some of that is taken in taxes.

And as a result of this, the wealth of the population increases, enabling more products and services to be sold, creating more jobs.



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07 Sep 2010, 4:17 pm

Cliffracerslayer wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Cliffracerslayer wrote:
Almost nobody actually aspires to be leeches. Attacking people who do not work, attacks those who DO work to a far greater degree than giving the former poverty-level income ever did.

Because by forcing people to work, you reduce the bargaining power, because then you force people to do any work available however rubbish it may be. While if they have the option of not working, then the employers have to make the jobs worthwhile, or else none will do them. :twisted: :twisted:


Employers don't care whether their labor considers the work "worthwhile", but they will certainly remove you from their employment if you say that it isn't "worthwhile".


Unless you make the benefits overly rosy (which no government could afford to do making it an empty complaint), then there is no conflict of interest between the non-working and the working here.

If it is possible to have a reasonable life without working, then those who are employing have to make working preferable to not working, which means better pay and better conditions, even if some of that is taken in taxes.

And as a result of this, the wealth of the population increases, enabling more products and services to be sold, creating more jobs.


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.)



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07 Sep 2010, 4:22 pm

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.



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07 Sep 2010, 5:03 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.


You mean that you think it is possible to decrease the available supply of applicants by sustaining them even without the necessity of working in order to live? Sounds nice as a notion. Has this been attempted anywhere so as to see the results of such a set of conditions?



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07 Sep 2010, 5:26 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
You mean that you think it is possible to decrease the available supply of applicants by sustaining them even without the necessity of working in order to live? Sounds nice as a notion. Has this been attempted anywhere so as to see the results of such a set of conditions?


I'm pretty sure it was tried historically in Britain for a time and worked pretty well at raising living standards.

Generally it is not tried, not because it isn't a good idea but because the people who control the government are the employers. And the employers can also enlist the resentment of the employed against the unemployed to enlist the population at-large to betray their own long-term interests in order to keep a few more pennies in their pockets short-term.

The problem is that it is a victim of it's own success. If you succeed then you succeed in to an extent in reconciling labor and capital, which only serves to increase the power of the propaganda machine of the employers/capitalists. In the end it's like "look what free-market capitalism has done for you", so the fools vote to impoverish themselves again.

The important thing is to set up an unambiguous Socialist government, one that makes few or no concessions to the employers, in other words a revolutionary government. Since it is identified so strongly against Capitalism, it is able to claim the benefits it has imparted for a new system, rather than allowing the old capitalist system to claim the benefits of opposing it.



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07 Sep 2010, 5:35 pm

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.

As for the original post, I take a longer view:

There are certain things that benefit us all, but that it is not in anyone's direct commercial interest to provide: defence and security; transportation and communication infrastructure; health and education. (Now that's not to say that there are not private interests in these fields, but the provision of these services, universally, within an economy is beyond the scope of a purely commercial relationship between suppliers and consumers). So we levy taxes to ensure that these services are provided.

I take a similar view with respect to social safety nets. Every person must have food, clothing and, in most environments, some form of shelter. These things are going to be procured whether we support people or not. Property crime rises when people's capacity to meet their need is challenged. Whether the phenomenon is economic downturn or clawbacks of welfare/social security payments, the same principle applies.

Now, this does not mean that one must tolerate fraud and abuse--government has plenty of tools at its disposal to address these phenomena without turning off the taps.


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07 Sep 2010, 6:06 pm

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?

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.

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but abolishing the minimum wage would certainly reduce unemployment significantly.

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

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:


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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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