mccain is not actually that different than bush

hell, HE SPOKE AT LIBERTY'S GRADUATION

just because you think guiliani and mccain are moderates, doesn't automatically mean they are, or that discussion isn't warranted

5/29/2006 10:39:00 PM

Quote :

" It started to get really bad when you suggested that the market would naturally solve our enviornmental problems."

Ok, odd, I don't think I have ever felt that. Pollution is like all human conditions, such as poverty and crime, they will never be "solved" by any system (well, maybe God could have a go).

Quote :

"From your posts, I glean that you have no values. You're just obsessed with economics and the beauty of the market. Your brilliant yet autistic view of the world frightens me."

In this you are both correct and completely wrong. I agree with you about most forms of injustice. Poverty is a crime against humanity, so are many of the other issues you bring up. But one of my favorite writers says, economics "reflects the broad ambition...to understand people: as individuals, as partners, as competitors, and as members of the vast social organizations we call 'economies.'"

The mistake at hand, I suspect, is that when you and I are presented with an injustice, such as poverty, we respond differently. You want to have it fixed, so you focus on the fact that it is "unjust," which is undeniable. Conversely, my first instinct is to seek out the cause and effect, such as incentives, that have caused the problem. Regretfully, as you see injustice and assume bad actors (the evil greedy rich) I see an interconnected network of causes, none of which are singly responsible and many of which are irreparable. As such, your policy suggestions, such as I've seen, would either not fix the problem or might actually be destructive. You perceive my conclusion to imply that I am uncarring as it seems I am in favor of inaction in the face of injustice. The reality, however, is that we must first do no harm. I have thought about this issue of "poor vs. rich" a lot, read a lot of books, and come to a long list of suggestions to help alleviate the problem, none of which has anything to do with making the rich pay more taxes.

The single best policy change that would make life better for the uneducated and unskilled American would be to dramatically encourage the immigration of skilled or otherwise educated workers. My favorite scheme allows any requesting individual with a 4-year college degree (or seeking one) an immediate visa to the U.S., with citizenship to be offered in 6 to 8 years (immediate families also welcome).

The reason for this has to do with the sub-optimal operation of the labor market. You see, in most businesses and industries unskilled and skilled labor are complimentary in that you need a minimum of both to operate. In America, however, thanks to perverse government policies during the 70s and 80s, changing technology, and paterns of immigration, America is suffering a dramatic shortage of highly educated labor and awash with uneducated labor. To oversimplify the situation, there is not enough skilled labor in America to make productive use of all the available unskilled labor. Thus, skilled labor is fetching ever higher salaries while unskilled labor is idled with low wages and unemployment. This, of course, is also why college tuition has been increasing so dramatically.

There is nothing the Federal Government can quickly do to fix this market imbalance beyond deporting large swaths of America's underclass. Donating Federal land to found new universities is a good idea, but high tuition rates have already encouraged immense investment to expand the capacity of America's universities. This problem might fix itself in another decade or so as more facilities come online and people graduate, you will know it when low-skilled wages start rising faster than skilled wages, a reverse of the trend over the past 15 years.

5/29/2006 10:39:50 PM

Quote :

"LoneSnark: The mistake at hand, I suspect, is that when you and I are presented with an injustice, such as poverty, we respond differently. You want to have it fixed, so you focus on the fact that it is "unjust," which is undeniable. Conversely, my first instinct is to seek out the cause and effect, such as incentives, that have caused the problem. Regretfully, as you see injustice and assume bad actors (the evil greedy rich) I see an interconnected network of causes, none of which are singly responsible and many of which are irreparable."

I do not blame everything on the evil greedy rich. I think poverty in the US, for example, is caused by the breakdown of the family unit, lack of a living wage, less-than-adequate public services, etc... I think the breakdown of the family unit and the lack of a living wage are directly related. I also have this other crazy theory, but I'm not sure how valid it is; it involves higher rates of depression in the lower classes caused by nutritional deficiencies.

And I'm disturbed by your ability to sit back and say that some of these things are "irreparable." That's really convenient, and I imagine it helps people feel better about the state of the world and the position they hold in it. (But you say that you care.) I'm also confused why you don't think raising the taxes on the rich (just a bit) for improved public services wouldn't work.

Quote :

"LoneSnark: To oversimplify the situation, there is not enough skilled labor in America to make productive use of all the available unskilled labor. Thus, skilled labor is fetching ever higher salaries while unskilled labor is idled with low wages and unemployment."

Okay. I don't see how making more jobs available for uneducated workers would raise their wages. That's the part where you lost me. I'm pretty sure it's something basic that I just don't know. Please respond because I really do want to get what you're saying.

[Edited on May 31, 2006 at 1:28 PM. Reason : sss]

5/31/2006 1:14:20 PM

newt just won a straw poll with 40%

mccain was way in the back of the pack with 10%, tied with condi i think

http://www.startribune.com/587/story/471151.html

6/5/2006 12:27:25 PM

Quote :

"Okay. I don't see how making more jobs available for uneducated workers would raise their wages. That's the part where you lost me. I'm pretty sure it's something basic that I just don't know. Please respond because I really do want to get what you're saying."

Ok, I'll start from the top. There are two largely independent factors which affect someone's potential wage:

The first is productivity. If a worker is capable of producing $100 of wealth every single hour of work then his wages will tend towards $100 (never actually getting there for numerous reasons). An employer will not pay you more than you are worth and would very much like to pay you less than you are worth.

The second is labor demand. At a productivity of $100 an hour, if there are 1000 jobs available for 900 workers then employers will bid the wages close to $100 an hour in an effort to attract another 100 laborers. Conversely, if there are 900 jobs available for 1000 workers then employees will bid down the wages until 100 laborers move away or another 100 jobs turn up.

To engage in business requires "land, labor, opportunity, and capital", if you are missing labor, then it doesn't matter how much land or capital you have. As above with 1000 workers seeking 900 jobs one must assume a shortage of another requirement such as opportunity (entreprenours don't know what shortages exist). Of course, what if you don't have the right kind of labor?

An example would be a factory to make cars: it requires 100 acres of land near transportation, $1 billion in capital, 100 uneducated workers to run the line, and 100 educated workers to fix the robots and design the cars. Now, the same applies: if you cannot hire 100 educated workers to fix your robots then there is no point spending $1 billion to build a factory you cannot operate. As such, even if we know an opportunity (a shortage of cars), have the land (Texas), have the capital (interest rates are low) and plenty of uneducated labor (Mexican immigrants) we cannot build our factory and employ them. Thus, if we assume there was 1000 uneducated workers seeking an existing 900 jobs then unemployment will remain high and uneducated wages will stagnate.

Of course, it doesn't stop there. Remember how I said your wages are capped at your productivity? This is true, but you must remember that you are not working alone. Let us assume another car factory employs 100 uneducated and 100 educated workers and generates $10,000 an hour. Of course, we don't know each workers productivity, all we know is every hour $10,000 of wealth is generated. Now, as there are 110 uneducated workers seeking employment uneducated wages will drop until 10 workers go away, let us assume this happens at $10 an hour. Also, let us assume the same scenario of educated labor, which balances at $20 an hour, giving us an hourly profit of $7,000 for the owners. This is a lot of profit, so more owners move to town to build more factories. Suddenly, educated labor becomes scarce: factory owners are bidding against each other to claim that labor. At what point is it going to stop for the above described factory? It stops when hourly profit hits zero, which means at $1,000 an hour for uneducated labor the factory is willing to pay $9,000 an hour for educated labor , or $90 an hour per worker. At this point, there are no profits left, so investors stop investing and go elsewhere, leaving a large pool of unemployed uneducated workers at $10 an hour.

This is of course oversimplified, a clever factory owner would use fewer robots and replace them with more uneducated laborers. But this can only go so far as hand built cars are often of lower quality. Either way, statistics show, like in the simplified example above, fast wage growth for educated labor and lax, even negative, wage growth for uneducated labor. It doesn't have to be this way, it is entirely possible for American industry to use up all the available labor, thus splitting productivity among them more equally. This is what is happening in Britain during its latest economic expansion, but only because it has structured its immigration system with more emphasis on education.

6/5/2006 1:44:01 PM

this thread is an extreme testament to ambivalence and selective acceptance

[Edited on June 5, 2006 at 11:08 PM. Reason : :-)]

6/5/2006 11:08:41 PM

i hope you aren't bitching about my tolerance of salisburyboy

because i say the exact same thing about him as I did about this thread, and I treat them the same way (with the exception that I personally no longer bother posting in salisburyboy threads).

6/5/2006 11:11:49 PM