The vast majority of people who shop at Walmart go their, not because they prefer the store, but because it's the only place they can afford. And the reason it's the only place they can afford is because companies like Walmart have been lowering the salaries for American workers.
:psyduck:
I am charitably going to assume that you're just a particularly subtle economist. So: blunt question time. Are you willing to claim, with a straight face, that a hypothetical Walmart that paid its workers, oh, let's say twice as much, would employ just as many workers as it does now?
I've held off thus far with this question because I didn't feel it particularly special or needing of attention.
But, well, I feel like it should be asked and should be answered.
If economists have all the answers, why the fuck isn't it working? I think economists are making terrible mistakes with the terms "globilization" and "competition" like they should even be considered. I think your defaulting to the "I'm right because I'm an economist and here's a whole bunch of words to show it and some edge cases from the past 200 years that show my theories."
I think if you look deep and hard, once America and Europe pull out of cheap manufactured goods from Asia, that there's no more competition to be had. If someone wants to compete on the global scale, it's going to have to be the Asia that makes the move more towards economies of the west. Meaning, paying people money and a fair living wage. Because those are your consumers.
There's a reason why "Made in America" was a thing.
I really don't think that if someone has a choice of an Americonn board of Foxconn board there's going to be much hemming and hawing because one is $10 more expensive. I really don't. At least not among the first world. Like I said, probably in the Middle East and Africa.
Then again, knowing what I know of the software world, they'd probably opt for American made because standards (ethical and physical) and not getting spied on is a major concern (transparency of services?).
I think you have the right idea, I think you're the one that can give us the most insight, but I think you're flat dead wrong about this.
Also to answer your question, I don't think it would be able to afford twice as many workers because there isn't that much money. So the problem is, is capitalism the answer to standard of living?
I'm just a humble lawyer, but I would suggest that you consider the global economy from a more macro level instead of just looking at manufacturing. The US government needs to borrow to continue to provide services (and basically always has except for a brief, glorious moment engineered by the tragic hero Andrew Jackson before he made the situation even worse through his hubris in thinking he could destroy the bank). We largely borrow from China, Japan and other Asian countries, who buy out bonds in part because it helps them to keep their own currencies weak (beneficial to them as export based economies). Adopt protectionism, and all of a sudden they have no reason to buy our bonds, and we lose the ability to borrow all together.
But let's say we decide protectionism is the best approach, and the rest of the world does as well. We are comparatively resource poor, especially w/r/t the resources needed to produce modern electronics, and other countries have larger, better trained work forces and better manufacturing infrastructures than we have. Made in America was more of a thing when the American manufacturing worker was among the most well trained in the world and had access to the best tools. This is no longer the case.
I do agree with your last paragraph though. The answer to this problem is not naked capitalism. It is harnessing the resources generated by our capitalist system to provide for our people. Trying to integrate wealth creation and wealth distribution is a fool's errand. Far more efficient to create wealth in the optimal manner and then distribute it in a way the is most beneficial to all.
You're still looking at things through the lens of how things are are now, and your opinions on what should be done about our situation hinge on the status quo trucking along, most keeping what they already have, and everything functioning the way it's "supposed" to according to the theories and systems economists go on and on about, while forgetting that economics is not a science and that it is a study dependent on man-made systems which are mutable if there is political will to do so.
Those of proposing new solutions, or alternative solutions and systems are making the claim that
It would be possible for the western world to become protectionist, and not have to compete with near-free labor if we were willing to do whatever it takes to get there - that may mean 0-ing out all debt,
My argument is that sentient humans can decide things and create things and we're not at the whims of modern studies of economics, which almost always benefit the winners and don't take into account any of the losers (glorious efficiency! *harumph*), when making those decisions if we don't want to.
Capitalism was invented. Communism was invented. Socialism was invented. Fascism was invented. Everything we do and claim is "real" was invented by us and the rules are also invented by us and backed by the systems we create, which we then study and flesh-out in order to attribute more "real-ness" to them. There's no reason why we can't do things differently and create a different kind of economy, and I suspect that those in this thread arguing against such things would be the losers in such a paradigm shift.
Again, I'm not arguing that anything I've said will actually fix anything, especially since I don't think anything will, but I dislike the notion of: "We can't change things! Because... reasons! ... and Econ 101!" If all humans throughout history had that notion then we wouldn't have gotten much of anywhere. Pushing the idea that it gives ultimate legitimacy to a system if you just create a field of study that supports said system is ludicrous.
I don't think anyone in this thread lacks the capacity to understand that any global economy paradigm shifts will shake things up very badly; it's that we don't have enough skin in the game to care or ever benefit from the status quo. If the world were to fall apart for a little while, then maybe we would rebuild it and make it better.
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
No, I read them and understood them. You kept pushing the "no protectionism" argument, and there's Krugman arguing that some protectionism can be good.
Also, I knew you would point out the caveats with glee.
There's a difference between the limited short-term protectionism that Krugman says can be okay sometimes in abnormal conditions, vs comments like "Also, sorry, I care more about American jobs than Chinese jobs. I'm American and I'm not a globalist" that imply protectionism as a permanent operating assumption.
I can agree with at, but by the same token I feel that if you're going to sell a product in a country then you should have the decency to employ them, or be an employer in that country, especially if it won't affect your bottom line that much, and by the same token if you're going to make a product in a country, you should have the decency to pay the people who work for you enough to buy the product they're making - that is the problem the Chinese are having now - making all this technology for other people to buy.
I'm actually a fan of everyone having a job and making a decent living, world-wide, but, again, how do you get around resource depletion?
If everyone in the world, down to the last man, bought and iPhone, because they wanted one, we might, in theory, run out of materials to make iPhones. What if we ran out of materials to make the microprocessor? These things are not impossible; they're inevitable unless we can somehow create more resources from nothing. No one answers that point sufficiently since it breaks the "everyone can be equal and happy and have what they want" mindset.
Also, I understand the impulse to paint me as Ross Perot personified, but my opinions are a little more nuanced than they're being made out to be.
You work in an industry(software dev) where your end product uses practically the same resources to ship 10 units as 1000 as 10000000 and you don't see how we can globally move away from a purely resource dependent economy?
I am not talking about the economy.
I'm talking about having enough resources and materials to create the things people buy and the things people need to enjoy the current standard of living in the U.S.
Finite resources + Infinite consumption = ????
Also, if software developers could invent replicators, you would actually have a point.
You do realize that pegging the US standard of living at its current level means we will soon have one of the lowest standards if living in the world, right? Today you will be devoting enourmous resources to securing the resources and setting up the infrastructure to build iPhones in America, at a much lower profit margin than they ate currently built, and then you will either force the prices to stay low or wages to go up so much (in part on Apple's back) that people can afford US made iPhones. Who will invent the next big thing then? Why would the US government even want the next big thing to be invented, when it will just cost us a fortune to secure the resources and build the infrastructure to make it here? Your world will soon have us driving our conventional made in the USA cars and talking on out us made iPhones while the rest of the world enjoys flying cars and neural implants that provide direct Internet access with a thought.
Super semantic thinking.
Also, no one has answered any of my questions, they just try to poke holes in the small parts of my argument and then making an entirely different argument.
If Americans need jobs and if Americans need to make a decent living and yet all Americans are not qualified or intelligent enough to become programmers and engineers - also fields fast being overtaken by the Indian and the Chinese - then where do the jobs come from? I know your suggestion is that it is inefficient to provide jobs, and we should just redistribute wealth, but I don't see that as a viable solution in even the most remote future.
Furthermore, if we are to continue producing things, any things, that people buy - and unless I'm wrong, consumer demand fuels our global economy - then do we not then need to produce things indefinitely in order to have an economy indefinitely? If so, then do we not need infinite resources to continue producing indefinitely to have infinite products to sell to consumers whose demand fuels our global economy?
Also, just to point this out, I'm not stupid - I've watched Star Trek, too. I am aware that in a Utopian society filled with educated, self-less people, we don't need to worry about these problems. However, I'm talking about the world we actually live in - the world of limitations and finite things.
The PRC does not buy bonds or dollars to keep currency weak. It should be selling bonds or dollars to keep American currency weak. Buying more raises the price of something, not lowers it.
The US does not sell Treasuries in pursuit of monetary policy, nor pursues monetary policy in order to maintain Treasury buyers. When it has had to decide in the past, it maintained their separation: this was the Nixon shock and end of Bretton Woods.
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
My argument is that economics is a field of study built around the study of a system we created and it's viability and accuracy are dependent on the system working in a certain way. If we were to create a different system then we would have different theories of economics. So why is economics given absolute authority, if the rules and mechanics it purports to study are created by us and changeable by us? Economics is not the study of natural phenomena. Also, is every economic theory and study absolutely accurate?
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
Redistribution and globalization has actually won governments in recent history; that was the whole third way revolution. A return to interwar protectionism, however, has not.
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
Furthermore, the onus is actually on you to defend the system you're cheer-leading, which quite clearly only benefits some of the population some of the time, and destroys many lives. We're actually having a thread, if you've been paying attention, about the pitfalls of the system you're ardently defending with some Econ 101.
We chose the system we have, we can create a new, different, better one if we want to. That's pretty much the core of any point I've made. If you're argument is that we can't, or that we shouldn't, then you need to define why that is, rather than spewing Freshman economics coursework knowledge at people
Redistribution and globalization has actually won governments in recent history; that was the whole third way revolution. A return to interwar protectionism, however, has not.
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
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Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
My argument is that economics is a field of study built around the study of a system we created and it's viability and accuracy are dependent on the system working in a certain way. If we were to create a different system then we would have different theories of economics. So why is economics given absolute authority, if the rules and mechanics it purports to study are created by us and changeable by us? Economics is not the study of natural phenomena. Also, is every economic theory and study absolutely accurate?
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
Nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things economists "purport to study". Indeed, nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things that have actually been tried and can be studied directly.
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
My argument is that economics is a field of study built around the study of a system we created and it's viability and accuracy are dependent on the system working in a certain way. If we were to create a different system then we would have different theories of economics. So why is economics given absolute authority, if the rules and mechanics it purports to study are created by us and changeable by us? Economics is not the study of natural phenomena. Also, is every economic theory and study absolutely accurate?
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
You can vote to make different trade-offs from what your country currently pursues. You cannot, however, vote for manna to fall from heaven.
There is no political will greater than that which moved millions of desperate Chinese to smelt steel in their backyards. Call it the world's largest experiment of your hypothesis, of the supremacy of the will.
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
My argument is that economics is a field of study built around the study of a system we created and it's viability and accuracy are dependent on the system working in a certain way. If we were to create a different system then we would have different theories of economics. So why is economics given absolute authority, if the rules and mechanics it purports to study are created by us and changeable by us? Economics is not the study of natural phenomena. Also, is every economic theory and study absolutely accurate?
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
Nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things economists "purport to study". Indeed, nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things that have actually been tried and can be studied directly.
Again, I'm not arguing that anything I've said will actually fix anything, especially since I don't think anything will, but I dislike the notion of: "We can't change things! Because... reasons! ... and Econ 101!" If all humans throughout history had that notion then we wouldn't have gotten much of anywhere. Pushing the idea that it gives ultimate legitimacy to a system if you just create a field of study that supports said system is ludicrous.
Also, I've actually advocated that some protectionist policy, to actually keep jobs in the U.S. is good.
Don't you think with COL being so low in China and India that it is very likely more and more jobs will move there because it's just more efficient. So, given that COL in those countries is likely to be low for quite some time, how do we keep jobs in the U.S. I doubt you really care, or that you even need to.
None of you have any solutions. You just shout down anyone even making the claim that we can do things differently.
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
My argument is that economics is a field of study built around the study of a system we created and it's viability and accuracy are dependent on the system working in a certain way. If we were to create a different system then we would have different theories of economics. So why is economics given absolute authority, if the rules and mechanics it purports to study are created by us and changeable by us? Economics is not the study of natural phenomena. Also, is every economic theory and study absolutely accurate?
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
You can vote to make different trade-offs from what your country currently pursues. You cannot, however, vote for manna to fall from heaven.
There is no political will greater than that which moved millions of desperate Chinese to smelt steel in their backyards. Call it the world's largest experiment of your hypothesis, of the supremacy of the will.
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
The living wage is lower in most of the southeastern US than in the northwest. Would it be better off if it seceded?
Fundamentally the supply of jobs is not some limited resource to be spread around like butter, flowing apace to the lowest COL. Your insistence on this point suggests that we are not going to have a productive discussion unless we identify the actual source of this disagreement.
As for solutions: fine. Here is one: I propose to build a great castle in the sky, in which a great cornucopia shall spew all our living needs for the rest of eternity. And I shall achieve this via the people's will, for none of your petty science constrains me.
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Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
My argument is that economics is a field of study built around the study of a system we created and it's viability and accuracy are dependent on the system working in a certain way. If we were to create a different system then we would have different theories of economics. So why is economics given absolute authority, if the rules and mechanics it purports to study are created by us and changeable by us? Economics is not the study of natural phenomena. Also, is every economic theory and study absolutely accurate?
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
Nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things economists "purport to study". Indeed, nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things that have actually been tried and can be studied directly.
Again, I'm not arguing that anything I've said will actually fix anything, especially since I don't think anything will, but I dislike the notion of: "We can't change things! Because... reasons! ... and Econ 101!" If all humans throughout history had that notion then we wouldn't have gotten much of anywhere. Pushing the idea that it gives ultimate legitimacy to a system if you just create a field of study that supports said system is ludicrous.
Also, I've actually advocated that some protectionist policy, to actually keep jobs in the U.S. is good.
Don't you think with COL being so low in China and India that it is very likely more and more jobs will move there because it's just more efficient. So, given that COL in those countries is likely to be low for quite some time, how do we keep jobs in the U.S. I doubt you really care, or that you even need to.
None of you have any solutions. You just shout down anyone even making the claim that we can do things differently.
Jobs, and in particular one type of job, is not the ultimate rubric around which all political and economic policy should be organized. If we lost every single last manufacturing job and our standard of living went up, all other things being equal, that'd be a good thing, yes?
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
My argument is that economics is a field of study built around the study of a system we created and it's viability and accuracy are dependent on the system working in a certain way. If we were to create a different system then we would have different theories of economics. So why is economics given absolute authority, if the rules and mechanics it purports to study are created by us and changeable by us? Economics is not the study of natural phenomena. Also, is every economic theory and study absolutely accurate?
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
Nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things economists "purport to study". Indeed, nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things that have actually been tried and can be studied directly.
Again, I'm not arguing that anything I've said will actually fix anything, especially since I don't think anything will, but I dislike the notion of: "We can't change things! Because... reasons! ... and Econ 101!" If all humans throughout history had that notion then we wouldn't have gotten much of anywhere. Pushing the idea that it gives ultimate legitimacy to a system if you just create a field of study that supports said system is ludicrous.
Also, I've actually advocated that some protectionist policy, to actually keep jobs in the U.S. is good.
Don't you think with COL being so low in China and India that it is very likely more and more jobs will move there because it's just more efficient. So, given that COL in those countries is likely to be low for quite some time, how do we keep jobs in the U.S. I doubt you really care, or that you even need to.
None of you have any solutions. You just shout down anyone even making the claim that we can do things differently.
It's not exactly an easy problem for one country to solve. A big step towards resolving it would be to have the US (and other first world countries) agree to join a carbon/waste/energy market where you pay to pollute and waste. If the US and others joined, then China wouldn't be able to stay out and companies would no longer be able to avoid environmental regulation by moving overseas.
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
My argument is that economics is a field of study built around the study of a system we created and it's viability and accuracy are dependent on the system working in a certain way. If we were to create a different system then we would have different theories of economics. So why is economics given absolute authority, if the rules and mechanics it purports to study are created by us and changeable by us? Economics is not the study of natural phenomena. Also, is every economic theory and study absolutely accurate?
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
You can vote to make different trade-offs from what your country currently pursues. You cannot, however, vote for manna to fall from heaven.
There is no political will greater than that which moved millions of desperate Chinese to smelt steel in their backyards. Call it the world's largest experiment of your hypothesis, of the supremacy of the will.
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
I have no blessed idea. It is already known that food, water, and accommodation are already enough to meet projected population growth, provided that urbanization and ensuing density can continue apace in the global south: that is, assuming the relative peace and growth that has characterized the post-Cold-War period. Oil is tricky; nuclear has risks. A major problem is convincing people to stop trying to live in places where it is phenomenally costly to live, like deserts; the counterpoint is convincing people who don't live in deserts to accept migrants. You may have to accept the reality that it is deeply unjust that Europe and America have seen fit to deplete nearly all of its natural woodland and yet feel inclined to claim the territory of other nations as all of mankind's, sacrosanct and untouchable. Indonesia is hardly going to stop deforestation at the whim of white men barking commands from their own wholly deforested European plains.
Regardless, you do realize that I don't actually have to have a solution in order to point out that your allocation of finite resources is going to be more inefficient, or more the point, more unjust, yes? It is quite possible to do much worse than merely not proceeding to a glorious new golden age here.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
The PRC does not buy bonds or dollars to keep currency weak. It should be selling bonds or dollars to keep American currency weak. Buying more raises the price of something, not lowers it.
The US does not sell Treasuries in pursuit of monetary policy, nor pursues monetary policy in order to maintain Treasury buyers. When it has had to decide in the past, it maintained their separation: this was the Nixon shock and end of Bretton Woods.
I was referring to the mechanism that the PRC historically used to peg the Yuan at a fixed ration to the dollar. They invest in our currency so that our currency is stronger, keeping theirs comparatively weaker.
not sure I can make much productive headway without explaining mainstream econ's own accounts of why shareholders might rationally decide to overpay senior management. It's not really intuitive unless it's possible to appreciate that it is actually the default outcome. Do you know any good syntheses of principal-agent problems in general for the layman? I can't think of any easily. The realistic ones out of my corporate finance handbook are too detailed.
For anyone else: the empirics makes it very suggestive that skyrocketing 0.1% wages are related to US-specific corporate governance issues. There's a whole pile of Stuff that makes bad behavior by US senior management especially likely (especially diffuse and weakened stakeholders, CEOs with excessive equity and board power, etc.), and a whole pile of statistics that US senior management do behave uniquely badly.
The living wage is lower in most of the southeastern US than in the northwest. Would it be better off if it seceded?
Fundamentally the supply of jobs is not some limited resource to be spread around like butter, flowing apace to the lowest COL. Your insistence on this point suggests that we are not going to have a productive discussion unless we identify the actual source of this disagreement.
As for solutions: fine. Here is one: I propose to build a great castle in the sky, in which a great cornucopia shall spew all our living needs for the rest of eternity. And I shall achieve this via the people's will, for none of your petty science constrains me.
Will the servants in the castle be orcs or robots?
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
My argument is that economics is a field of study built around the study of a system we created and it's viability and accuracy are dependent on the system working in a certain way. If we were to create a different system then we would have different theories of economics. So why is economics given absolute authority, if the rules and mechanics it purports to study are created by us and changeable by us? Economics is not the study of natural phenomena. Also, is every economic theory and study absolutely accurate?
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
Nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things economists "purport to study". Indeed, nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things that have actually been tried and can be studied directly.
Again, I'm not arguing that anything I've said will actually fix anything, especially since I don't think anything will, but I dislike the notion of: "We can't change things! Because... reasons! ... and Econ 101!" If all humans throughout history had that notion then we wouldn't have gotten much of anywhere. Pushing the idea that it gives ultimate legitimacy to a system if you just create a field of study that supports said system is ludicrous.
Also, I've actually advocated that some protectionist policy, to actually keep jobs in the U.S. is good.
Don't you think with COL being so low in China and India that it is very likely more and more jobs will move there because it's just more efficient. So, given that COL in those countries is likely to be low for quite some time, how do we keep jobs in the U.S. I doubt you really care, or that you even need to.
None of you have any solutions. You just shout down anyone even making the claim that we can do things differently.
Noone has a solution to your artificial problem because it is basically unsolvable. You are concerned with the well being of Americans, and want them all to have a good standard of living which they work for. The work that many of them can provide is not worth the wages that must be paid to give them that good standard of living, but instead of compensating by making sure that everyone has enough to achieve that standard of living, you want to make sure everyone is paid enough at their job to do so. Our standard of living is only as high as it is because of the efficiencies that our modern economy have discovered, but you want us to discard them all and so have less overall wealth to go around. So people keep working at mandated high wages to produce goods we want them to be able to buy, driving up the price of the goods or resulting in fewer goods actually being produced. The longer you run this macabre pantomime of an economy, the worse everyone's quality of living will get relative to the rest of the world. Do you really not see why an economy based on a government fiat to pay high wages and to only make use of the resources we have here will not allow us to maintain the same quality of life that we have here now when we are taking advantage of other nation's cheap labor and abundant resources?
"Depleting natural resources" is largely orthogonal to the discussion of a living wage.
Depleting resources is depleting resources, regardless of whether we mandate a living wage or not. The difference is - when we hit peak oil, or run out of uranium, we will hit a supply-side constraint. We will have too few resources to meet demand. At that time, currency for any country that wants oil or uranium - which is every country on earth, more or less - will inflate. Goods and services that require oil or uranium (read: everything) will become more expensive.
At that time, it will inflate for everybody. If we paid people a living wage in the previous years, then the wealth produced during that time will have been distributed more equitably. If we didn't, then it would have been distributed less equitably.
But if you think that not paying people a living wage will result in the slower exhaustion of natural resources, first off I think that's highly idealistic and depends on people in the top strata of global income (first worlders) to curtail their consumption appropriately, which isn't something we've really been good at. Secondly, it assumes that economic development does not bring with it improved efficiency - if a country can't replace their aging coal and oil power plant system with wind and solar because they can't afford to, then stalling their development actually accelerates resource depletion. Third, you're making an empirical claim for which you have shown no evidence.
Finally, and probably most saliently, the position that we shouldn't give people a living wage because of resource depletion is exactly a "fuck you, I got mine" argument. We have eaten our generous slice of the oil pie, so now requiring other countries to stall their development because we might run out of oil is bald-faced selfishness.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
"Depleting natural resources" is largely orthogonal to the discussion of a living wage.
Depleting resources is depleting resources, regardless of whether we mandate a living wage or not. The difference is - when we hit peak oil, or run out of uranium, we will hit a supply-side constraint. We will have too few resources to meet demand. At that time, currency for any country that wants oil or uranium - which is every country on earth, more or less - will inflate. Goods and services that require oil or uranium (read: everything) will become more expensive.
At that time, it will inflate for everybody. If we paid people a living wage in the previous years, then the wealth produced during that time will have been distributed more equitably. If we didn't, then it would have been distributed less equitably.
But if you think that not paying people a living wage will result in the slower exhaustion of natural resources, first off I think that's highly idealistic and depends on people in the top strata of global income (first worlders) to curtail their consumption appropriately, which isn't something we've really been good at. Secondly, it assumes that economic development does not bring with it improved efficiency - if a country can't replace their aging coal and oil power plant system with wind and solar because they can't afford to, then stalling their development actually accelerates resource depletion. Third, you're making an empirical claim for which you have shown no evidence.
Finally, and probably most saliently, the position that we shouldn't give people a living wage because of resource depletion is exactly a "fuck you, I got mine" argument. We have eaten our generous slice of the oil pie, so now requiring other countries to stall their development because we might run out of oil is bald-faced selfishness.
Higher wages = increased purchasing power = increased demand = increased production and increasing travel = faster depletion of resources.
Again, being that the American worker is responsible, in a large part, for there even being a first world in the first place, I think they're owed more than what they're getting. The American worker should not be made to compete with near-zero wages. Race to the bottom.
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lu tzeSweeping the monestary steps.Registered Userregular
Since when did inventing the baconator and making shit cars entitle you to immunity from competition for ever and ever?
The living wage is lower in most of the southeastern US than in the northwest. Would it be better off if it seceded?
Fundamentally the supply of jobs is not some limited resource to be spread around like butter, flowing apace to the lowest COL. Your insistence on this point suggests that we are not going to have a productive discussion unless we identify the actual source of this disagreement.
As for solutions: fine. Here is one: I propose to build a great castle in the sky, in which a great cornucopia shall spew all our living needs for the rest of eternity. And I shall achieve this via the people's will, for none of your petty science constrains me.
Will the servants in the castle be orcs or robots?
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
My argument is that economics is a field of study built around the study of a system we created and it's viability and accuracy are dependent on the system working in a certain way. If we were to create a different system then we would have different theories of economics. So why is economics given absolute authority, if the rules and mechanics it purports to study are created by us and changeable by us? Economics is not the study of natural phenomena. Also, is every economic theory and study absolutely accurate?
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
Nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things economists "purport to study". Indeed, nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things that have actually been tried and can be studied directly.
Again, I'm not arguing that anything I've said will actually fix anything, especially since I don't think anything will, but I dislike the notion of: "We can't change things! Because... reasons! ... and Econ 101!" If all humans throughout history had that notion then we wouldn't have gotten much of anywhere. Pushing the idea that it gives ultimate legitimacy to a system if you just create a field of study that supports said system is ludicrous.
Also, I've actually advocated that some protectionist policy, to actually keep jobs in the U.S. is good.
Don't you think with COL being so low in China and India that it is very likely more and more jobs will move there because it's just more efficient. So, given that COL in those countries is likely to be low for quite some time, how do we keep jobs in the U.S. I doubt you really care, or that you even need to.
None of you have any solutions. You just shout down anyone even making the claim that we can do things differently.
Noone has a solution to your artificial problem because it is basically unsolvable. You are concerned with the well being of Americans, and want them all to have a good standard of living which they work for. The work that many of them can provide is not worth the wages that must be paid to give them that good standard of living, but instead of compensating by making sure that everyone has enough to achieve that standard of living, you want to make sure everyone is paid enough at their job to do so. Our standard of living is only as high as it is because of the efficiencies that our modern economy have discovered, but you want us to discard them all and so have less overall wealth to go around. So people keep working at mandated high wages to produce goods we want them to be able to buy, driving up the price of the goods or resulting in fewer goods actually being produced. The longer you run this macabre pantomime of an economy, the worse everyone's quality of living will get relative to the rest of the world. Do you really not see why an economy based on a government fiat to pay high wages and to only make use of the resources we have here will not allow us to maintain the same quality of life that we have here now when we are taking advantage of other nation's cheap labor and abundant resources?
I don't need to understand what you're saying, though I do being that I'm not an idiot, and that you have just been spewing very basic economics, because I have merely been stating that it is possible as sentient humans to create other, better systems if we can figure out how to do so. However, you're one of those people who only factors in what exists rather than what's possible, so I can't discuss this with you, and I probably should never have tried.
Also, again, I am not proposing that anything I have said is an actual solution, I've mostly made abstract statements and claims as to who I think is owed more in the grand scheme of things and how we should treat people who used to enjoy a better life and had it taken from them for the sake of efficiency.
You can't answer most of the questions I've asked because you don't have answers. Your answer is to muddle through the status quo and hope for the best. What, exactly, do you contribute to the discussion? You can't even follow the basic facts of our situation to their conclusion. In the end, we will either need more resources (impossible) or less people (unlikely given FREEEDOOMMMMMMM!!!) or a lot less consumption (unlikely because iPhones and all the wonderful disposable stuff people love and FREEEDOMMMM!!!), or some combination of those, to survive on this planet.
You don't have any answers or anything to contribute beyond stepping on people who make suggestions. I'm done.
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
My argument is that economics is a field of study built around the study of a system we created and it's viability and accuracy are dependent on the system working in a certain way. If we were to create a different system then we would have different theories of economics. So why is economics given absolute authority, if the rules and mechanics it purports to study are created by us and changeable by us? Economics is not the study of natural phenomena. Also, is every economic theory and study absolutely accurate?
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
The onus is on you to explain the, ahem, economics of your alternative. Political will does not fill stomachs alone, or the Great Leap Forward would have been a tremendous success.
Furthermore, the onus is actually on you to defend the system you're cheer-leading, which quite clearly only benefits some of the population some of the time, and destroys many lives. We're actually having a thread, if you've been paying attention, about the pitfalls of the system you're ardently defending with some Econ 101.
We chose the system we have, we can create a new, different, better one if we want to. That's pretty much the core of any point I've made. If you're argument is that we can't, or that we shouldn't, then you need to define why that is, rather than spewing Freshman economics coursework knowledge at people
First, ronya is talking about a lot more than freshman econ. If I had to guess, I would say that he's either at the end of a Ph.D. program in econ or a freshly minted Ph.D.
Second, if you want to tear down economics as a discipline, you may want to learn the first thing about said discipline. For example, there's an entire field in econ that deals with the questions you're interested in. Here's an article to get you started.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
Regardless, you do realize that I don't actually have to have a solution in order to point out that your allocation of finite resources is going to be more inefficient, or more the point, more unjust, yes? It is quite possible to do much worse than merely not proceeding to a glorious new golden age here.
Supply Demand curve has four corner.
Simultaneous Consumption in outward price shift
Evil So Called Economists Like Ronya are educated stupid
There is no Economist on Earth qualified to
teach Simultaneous4-Demand
Rotating Aggregate Cube Creation Principle,
and therefore, there is no Economist on Earth
worthy of being called a certified Economist.
"Depleting natural resources" is largely orthogonal to the discussion of a living wage.
Depleting resources is depleting resources, regardless of whether we mandate a living wage or not. The difference is - when we hit peak oil, or run out of uranium, we will hit a supply-side constraint. We will have too few resources to meet demand. At that time, currency for any country that wants oil or uranium - which is every country on earth, more or less - will inflate. Goods and services that require oil or uranium (read: everything) will become more expensive.
At that time, it will inflate for everybody. If we paid people a living wage in the previous years, then the wealth produced during that time will have been distributed more equitably. If we didn't, then it would have been distributed less equitably.
But if you think that not paying people a living wage will result in the slower exhaustion of natural resources, first off I think that's highly idealistic and depends on people in the top strata of global income (first worlders) to curtail their consumption appropriately, which isn't something we've really been good at. Secondly, it assumes that economic development does not bring with it improved efficiency - if a country can't replace their aging coal and oil power plant system with wind and solar because they can't afford to, then stalling their development actually accelerates resource depletion. Third, you're making an empirical claim for which you have shown no evidence.
Finally, and probably most saliently, the position that we shouldn't give people a living wage because of resource depletion is exactly a "fuck you, I got mine" argument. We have eaten our generous slice of the oil pie, so now requiring other countries to stall their development because we might run out of oil is bald-faced selfishness.
Higher wages = increased purchasing power = increased demand = increased production and increasing travel = faster depletion of resources.
Again, being that the American worker is responsible, in a large part, for there even being a first world in the first place, I think they're owed more than what they're getting. The American worker should not be made to compete with near-zero wages. Race to the bottom.
The American worker is also responsible for much of the resource depletion/pollution in the first place.
Also to answer your question, I don't think it would be able to afford twice as many workers because there isn't that much money. So the problem is, is capitalism the answer to standard of living?
People need to decouple Standard of Living, Wages, Employment, and Wealth Distribution. They are not the same. The latter 3 were all 'better' in the 1940s than they are today. Is our SoL higher or lower than it was then?
Going back to that stupid Fox News picture. 99.6% of the poor have a refrigerator. And everyone agreed that that's not a luxury, and having one does not make you not-poor.
from the wiki on fridges:
There was a 1922 model[of a kelvinator the first home fridge] that consisted of a wooden cold box, water-cooled compressor, an ice cube tray and a 9-cubic-foot (0.25 m3) compartment, and cost $714. (A 1922 Model-T Ford cost about $450.) By 1923, Kelvinator held 80 percent of the market for electric refrigerators.
The first fridge was more of a luxury item than having an industrial pizza oven in your home would be now, and was smaller than your mini-fridge in college.
This is why capitalism is the best system for raising our SoL. The innovations which were once confined to the very rich get pushed down the economic ladder by efficiency improvements. Even if you don't have health insurance, is your access to an MRI worse than it was in the more egalitarian 60s? Or your chances to get Chemo treatment? If you think it's a problem that not everyone can get an MRI, I agree with you. But the solution to that as SKFM keeps saying is redistributing the wealth we are creating via capitalism to assure a basic standard of living, not some bizzaro scheme that will cripple being able to create it.
This is why capitalism is the best system for raising our SoL. The innovations which were once confined to the very rich get pushed down the economic later by efficiency improvements. Even if you don't have health insurance, is your access to an MRI worse than it was in the more egalitarian 60s? Or your chances to get Chemo treatment? If you think it's a problem that not everyone can get an MRI, I agree with you. But the solution to that as SKFM keeps saying is redistributing the wealth we are creating via capitalism to assure a basic standard of living, not some bizzaro scheme that will cripple being able to create it.
The issues in the US aren't so much about not everyone being unable to get an MRI, but not everyone being able to afford basic care that used to be affordable. Also: housing and education. We have more wealth overall (because, like you say, capitalism is the best way we know of to generate wealth), but that wealth is poorly distributed.
Hence the reason that a regulated but mostly-free-market economy combined with redistribution of wealth is the model that literally every functional economy has settled on. Everything else is just fiddling with the dials on the amount of regulation and the methods for redistribution.
And it's also why it is retarded that "wealth redistribution" is a bogeyman in US political discourse. Wealth redistribution is inevitable - the only questions are "how" and "how much" and "to whom?"
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Is that graph calculating usage per capita based on actual civilian per-person usage or is it taking US usage and dividing by population? 'cause I'm pretty sure that us having fucking enormous fleets of military vehicles, I-don't-even-know-how-many international airports topping up foreign carrier's fuel tanks, having to ship stuff across one ocean or another to get to and from Asian manufacturers, and trucking goods across a country that's orders of magnitude larger than all of those other folks on the chart besides China all probably weigh pretty heavily into it if it's just US Usage / US Pop. It's not all just folks throwing away a shit ton of WalMart shopping bags.
Also, no one has answered any of my questions, they just try to poke holes in the small parts of my argument and then making an entirely different argument.
If Americans need jobs and if Americans need to make a decent living and yet all Americans are not qualified or intelligent enough to become programmers and engineers - also fields fast being overtaken by the Indian and the Chinese - then where do the jobs come from? I know your suggestion is that it is inefficient to provide jobs, and we should just redistribute wealth, but I don't see that as a viable solution in even the most remote future.
Furthermore, if we are to continue producing things, any things, that people buy - and unless I'm wrong, consumer demand fuels our global economy - then do we not then need to produce things indefinitely in order to have an economy indefinitely? If so, then do we not need infinite resources to continue producing indefinitely to have infinite products to sell to consumers whose demand fuels our global economy?
Also, just to point this out, I'm not stupid - I've watched Star Trek, too. I am aware that in a Utopian society filled with educated, self-less people, we don't need to worry about these problems. However, I'm talking about the world we actually live in - the world of limitations and finite things.
Might be useful to get back to this.
(1) is a assertion about policies that are viable in the sphere of politics. Economics has less to say about this. Political history does, however: your solution (of... world government? Autarky?) has no demonstrated viability at all, whereas the progressive welfare state has an active existence.
(2) is... a confusion of ideas. The purpose of having an economy is to achieve gains from specialization and trade. Otherwise we would make everything in our own households and trade nothing. But notice that even if we had no economy - if we did, in fact, make everything in our own households - if making things required an endless supply of resources, then regardless of the trade or lack thereof, we would indeed one day run out of these resources and starve. Happily most resources that we are interested in are renewable.
Insofar as trade enable us to use less resources to achieve the same outcomes, where necessary resources are limited we can at least postpone our inevitable doom further into the future.
We do speak often in terms of demand. There is a subtle reason for this, namely that modern capitalist economies are demand-determined in the short run. In English we would say that in capitalist economies, businesses often want to keep selling more stuff at prevailing prices. Businesses continually err on the side of surpluses, not shortages, and labour markets continually err on the side of unemployment, not overemployment, without either spiraling off into absurdity. This accords so well with real-life experience that it is easy to forget that it isn't actually supposed to happen in a perfectly allocated equilibrium; when we go to a shop, we always expect it to want us to buy more stuff, in contrast to an EC10 firm which only desires to sell as much as is profit-maximizing and no more.
If we ever met that demand, however, businesses would eventually adjust their prices higher and we would again be demand-determined. Likewise, if demand suddenly fell, businesses would eventually adjust until we are again only slightly in demand shortfall.
(3) an utopian society of philosopher-kings could still have trade, and the trade of finite resources. Why not? It is not the ill will or ignorance of the people that makes fossil fuels stubbornly take millions of years to form.
Is that graph calculating usage per capita based on actual civilian per-person usage or is it taking US usage and dividing by population? 'cause I'm pretty sure that us having fucking enormous fleets of military vehicles, I-don't-even-know-how-many international airports topping up foreign carrier's fuel tanks, having to ship stuff across one ocean or another to get to and from Asian manufacturers, and trucking goods across a country that's orders of magnitude larger than all of those other folks on the chart besides China all probably weigh pretty heavily into it if it's just US Usage / US Pop. It's not all just folks throwing away a shit ton of WalMart shopping bags.
Judging by the numbers shown, I think it's just national usage divided by population.
BTW, my understanding (though I might be wrong) is that sea transport is incredibly efficient in terms of miles shipped vs. energy usage. It doesn't take that much energy to move intermodal containers across the ocean; it's once those containers are loaded onto ground transport that you start burning a ton of fuel.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
What if we can't?
Maybe a better question. At is the optimal rate of depletion of natural resources?
The vast majority of people who shop at Walmart go their, not because they prefer the store, but because it's the only place they can afford. And the reason it's the only place they can afford is because companies like Walmart have been lowering the salaries for American workers.
:psyduck:
I am charitably going to assume that you're just a particularly subtle economist. So: blunt question time. Are you willing to claim, with a straight face, that a hypothetical Walmart that paid its workers, oh, let's say twice as much, would employ just as many workers as it does now?
I've held off thus far with this question because I didn't feel it particularly special or needing of attention.
But, well, I feel like it should be asked and should be answered.
If economists have all the answers, why the fuck isn't it working? I think economists are making terrible mistakes with the terms "globalization" and "competition" like they should even be considered. I think you're defaulting to the "I'm right because I'm an economist and here's a whole bunch of words to show it and some edge cases from the past 200 years that show my theories."
I think if you look deep and hard, once America and Europe pull out of cheap manufactured goods from Asia, that there's no more competition to be had. If someone wants to compete on the global scale, it's going to have to be the Asia that makes the move more towards economies of the west. Meaning, paying people money and a fair living wage. Because those are your consumers.
There's a reason why "Made in America" was a thing.
I really don't think that if someone has a choice of an Americonn board of Foxconn board there's going to be much hemming and hawing because one is $10 more expensive. I really don't. At least not among the first world. Like I said, probably in the Middle East and Africa.
Then again, knowing what I know of the software world, they'd probably opt for American made because standards (ethical and physical) and not getting spied on is a major concern (transparency of services?).
I think you have the right idea, I think you're the one that can give us the most insight, but I think you're flat dead wrong about this.
Also to answer your question, I don't think it would be able to afford twice as many workers because there isn't that much money. So the problem is, is capitalism the answer to standard of living?
For the record, I threw that barb at Schrodinger because he is misrepresenting his narrative and Marmoset is falling for it. Schrodinger knows, fully well, that employment will fall in his scenario: that unskilled workers will pushed out of the workforce because they cannot operate in his favoured retail model. He just doesn't care: it's a cost of elevating the wages of those remaining employed that he is prepared to pay, and if unskilled workers cannot earn the legal level of wages, so be it. Marmoset, on the other hand, has no idea what is happening and sees it as a costless wage hike.
Employment might fall at Walmart, but Walmart is somewhat of a monstrosity. It's just not a matter of the business practices, or the quality of the merchandise. It's the experience of shopping there. It's like the store was created by an ADHD person who couldn't decide what he wanted the store to be. And so they don't do anything in particular really well. Most people don't need a store that sells everything, because it's overwhelming. They just need a store that sells the things they need on a given day.
Costco just seems to have a better layout. You have fewer items, higher volume. That makes it a lot easier to do things like stock and inventory, easier to know which brands you're carrying, easier for people to direct themselves through the store. It's also not intended to be a one-stop shop for everything. It's a place where you buy the things you need in bulk, but for the things you don't need in bulk, you go somewhere else. So Walmart is designed to crush all the local stores which means fewer jobs overall, where Costco is designed to encourage them.
Really, when I try to imagine an ideal economy, I'm trying to imagine why we actually need a Walmart. The only major advantage Walmart has is price, by squeezing the employees and by squeezing the suppliers (who must outsource or issue layoffs as a result). But if consumers were more prosperous and could afford to shop elsewhere, then suddenly that advantage isn't as important.
Is that graph calculating usage per capita based on actual civilian per-person usage or is it taking US usage and dividing by population? 'cause I'm pretty sure that us having fucking enormous fleets of military vehicles, I-don't-even-know-how-many international airports topping up foreign carrier's fuel tanks, having to ship stuff across one ocean or another to get to and from Asian manufacturers, and trucking goods across a country that's orders of magnitude larger than all of those other folks on the chart besides China all probably weigh pretty heavily into it if it's just US Usage / US Pop. It's not all just folks throwing away a shit ton of WalMart shopping bags.
Judging by the numbers shown, I think it's just national usage divided by population.
BTW, my understanding (though I might be wrong) is that sea transport is incredibly efficient in terms of miles shipped vs. energy usage. It doesn't take that much energy to move intermodal containers across the ocean; it's once those containers are loaded onto ground transport that you start burning a ton of fuel.
Nicking a chart from wikipedia, is on CO2 rather than strict energy usage but is pretty illustrative:
- Air cargo - .8063 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile
- Truck - 0.1693 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile
- Train - 0.1048 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile
- Sea freight - 0.0403 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile
CptHamilton is saying silly things: one of the reasons Europe uses less energy per capita because it has greater amounts of sea freight (thanks to the highly fractal nature of the European peninsula) than North America does.
Also the rest of the world also has airports (shocking I know!).
Additional in reply to 'whah whah we use more energy from being in the middle of a continent', I'd answer 'so?' as in that case location is a fucking luxury good with attendant costs.
But let's say we decide protectionism is the best approach, and the rest of the world does as well. We are comparatively resource poor, especially w/r/t the resources needed to produce modern electronics, and other countries have larger, better trained work forces and better manufacturing infrastructures than we have. Made in America was more of a thing when the American manufacturing worker was among the most well trained in the world and had access to the best tools. This is no longer the case.
Gandhi led a movement to protest British made clothes which was cheaper and vastly superior in quality, on the grounds that buying homespun clothes was better for the local economy. That was in India, where presumably, consumers would be even more price sensitive than here in America.
Look at software companies that create DRM free software, that is super easy to pirate. Yet, their piracy numbers aren't much higher than their DRM competitors. A lot of customers choose to pay for the software, even though they can easily get it for free. Why? Because they take pride in being able to support the creators. The reason iTunes because successful is because Steve Jobs realized that you were never going to stop people from pirating music if they wanted to pirate music. But he also realized that their were a lot of people who genuinely wanted to support the artists, and at the time, there wasn't a way to do that convenient. So he had to give them a new model to support the artists they like that was easier for them.
I think a lot of people would take pride in buying from companies that are made in America, and companies that treat their employees fairly, if there was a way to market that better. If there was some sort of stamp of approval.
The vast majority of people who shop at Walmart go their, not because they prefer the store, but because it's the only place they can afford. And the reason it's the only place they can afford is because companies like Walmart have been lowering the salaries for American workers.
:psyduck:
I am charitably going to assume that you're just a particularly subtle economist. So: blunt question time. Are you willing to claim, with a straight face, that a hypothetical Walmart that paid its workers, oh, let's say twice as much, would employ just as many workers as it does now?
I've held off thus far with this question because I didn't feel it particularly special or needing of attention.
But, well, I feel like it should be asked and should be answered.
If economists have all the answers, why the fuck isn't it working? I think economists are making terrible mistakes with the terms "globalization" and "competition" like they should even be considered. I think you're defaulting to the "I'm right because I'm an economist and here's a whole bunch of words to show it and some edge cases from the past 200 years that show my theories."
I think if you look deep and hard, once America and Europe pull out of cheap manufactured goods from Asia, that there's no more competition to be had. If someone wants to compete on the global scale, it's going to have to be the Asia that makes the move more towards economies of the west. Meaning, paying people money and a fair living wage. Because those are your consumers.
There's a reason why "Made in America" was a thing.
I really don't think that if someone has a choice of an Americonn board of Foxconn board there's going to be much hemming and hawing because one is $10 more expensive. I really don't. At least not among the first world. Like I said, probably in the Middle East and Africa.
Then again, knowing what I know of the software world, they'd probably opt for American made because standards (ethical and physical) and not getting spied on is a major concern (transparency of services?).
I think you have the right idea, I think you're the one that can give us the most insight, but I think you're flat dead wrong about this.
Also to answer your question, I don't think it would be able to afford twice as many workers because there isn't that much money. So the problem is, is capitalism the answer to standard of living?
For the record, I threw that barb at Schrodinger because he is misrepresenting his narrative and Marmoset is falling for it. Schrodinger knows, fully well, that employment will fall in his scenario: that unskilled workers will pushed out of the workforce because they cannot operate in his favoured retail model. He just doesn't care: it's a cost of elevating the wages of those remaining employed that he is prepared to pay, and if unskilled workers cannot earn the legal level of wages, so be it. Marmoset, on the other hand, has no idea what is happening and sees it as a costless wage hike.
Employment might fall at Walmart, but Walmart is somewhat of a monstrosity. It's just not a matter of the business practices, or the quality of the merchandise. It's the experience of shopping there. It's like the store was created by an ADHD person who couldn't decide what he wanted the store to be. And so they don't do anything in particular really well. Most people don't need a store that sells everything, because it's overwhelming. They just need a store that sells the things they need on a given day.
Costco just seems to have a better layout. You have fewer items, higher volume. That makes it a lot easier to do things like stock and inventory, easier to know which brands you're carrying, easier for people to direct themselves through the store. It's also not intended to be a one-stop shop for everything. It's a place where you buy the things you need in bulk, but for the things you don't need in bulk, you go somewhere else. So Walmart is designed to crush all the local stores which means fewer jobs overall, where Costco is designed to encourage them.
Really, when I try to imagine an ideal economy, I'm trying to imagine why we actually need a Walmart. The only major advantage Walmart has is price, by squeezing the employees and by squeezing the suppliers (who must outsource or issue layoffs as a result). But if consumers were more prosperous and could afford to shop elsewhere, then suddenly that advantage isn't as important.
You may be unsurprised to learn that I have no dispute with this logic. If consumers were, in fact, more prosperous, then the economy should (yes) have less inferior goods and one of those inferior goods is the wonderful Walmart experience. Unfortunately you cannot make consumers as a whole more prosperous by merely ejecting the low-wage ones from the picture. The average goes up, but only because you've decided to ignore all the new zeroes. You do achieve an economy without a Walmart, but you also now have a lot of people on the welfare budget bill that you need to think about.
Costco only has about 4k SKUs compared to Walmarts over 100k. As for layout, we are constantly moving stuff around to make people wander the store so they might find something else to buy. Thing is, as single man, I almost never shop in my own warehouse. Aside from sundries and detergent, I just don't use enough of it.
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You're still looking at things through the lens of how things are are now, and your opinions on what should be done about our situation hinge on the status quo trucking along, most keeping what they already have, and everything functioning the way it's "supposed" to according to the theories and systems economists go on and on about, while forgetting that economics is not a science and that it is a study dependent on man-made systems which are mutable if there is political will to do so.
Those of proposing new solutions, or alternative solutions and systems are making the claim that
It would be possible for the western world to become protectionist, and not have to compete with near-free labor if we were willing to do whatever it takes to get there - that may mean 0-ing out all debt,
My argument is that sentient humans can decide things and create things and we're not at the whims of modern studies of economics, which almost always benefit the winners and don't take into account any of the losers (glorious efficiency! *harumph*), when making those decisions if we don't want to.
Capitalism was invented. Communism was invented. Socialism was invented. Fascism was invented. Everything we do and claim is "real" was invented by us and the rules are also invented by us and backed by the systems we create, which we then study and flesh-out in order to attribute more "real-ness" to them. There's no reason why we can't do things differently and create a different kind of economy, and I suspect that those in this thread arguing against such things would be the losers in such a paradigm shift.
Again, I'm not arguing that anything I've said will actually fix anything, especially since I don't think anything will, but I dislike the notion of: "We can't change things! Because... reasons! ... and Econ 101!" If all humans throughout history had that notion then we wouldn't have gotten much of anywhere. Pushing the idea that it gives ultimate legitimacy to a system if you just create a field of study that supports said system is ludicrous.
I don't think anyone in this thread lacks the capacity to understand that any global economy paradigm shifts will shake things up very badly; it's that we don't have enough skin in the game to care or ever benefit from the status quo. If the world were to fall apart for a little while, then maybe we would rebuild it and make it better.
Super semantic thinking.
Also, no one has answered any of my questions, they just try to poke holes in the small parts of my argument and then making an entirely different argument.
If Americans need jobs and if Americans need to make a decent living and yet all Americans are not qualified or intelligent enough to become programmers and engineers - also fields fast being overtaken by the Indian and the Chinese - then where do the jobs come from? I know your suggestion is that it is inefficient to provide jobs, and we should just redistribute wealth, but I don't see that as a viable solution in even the most remote future.
Furthermore, if we are to continue producing things, any things, that people buy - and unless I'm wrong, consumer demand fuels our global economy - then do we not then need to produce things indefinitely in order to have an economy indefinitely? If so, then do we not need infinite resources to continue producing indefinitely to have infinite products to sell to consumers whose demand fuels our global economy?
Also, just to point this out, I'm not stupid - I've watched Star Trek, too. I am aware that in a Utopian society filled with educated, self-less people, we don't need to worry about these problems. However, I'm talking about the world we actually live in - the world of limitations and finite things.
The PRC does not buy bonds or dollars to keep currency weak. It should be selling bonds or dollars to keep American currency weak. Buying more raises the price of something, not lowers it.
The US does not sell Treasuries in pursuit of monetary policy, nor pursues monetary policy in order to maintain Treasury buyers. When it has had to decide in the past, it maintained their separation: this was the Nixon shock and end of Bretton Woods.
My argument is that economics is a field of study built around the study of a system we created and it's viability and accuracy are dependent on the system working in a certain way. If we were to create a different system then we would have different theories of economics. So why is economics given absolute authority, if the rules and mechanics it purports to study are created by us and changeable by us? Economics is not the study of natural phenomena. Also, is every economic theory and study absolutely accurate?
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
Furthermore, the onus is actually on you to defend the system you're cheer-leading, which quite clearly only benefits some of the population some of the time, and destroys many lives. We're actually having a thread, if you've been paying attention, about the pitfalls of the system you're ardently defending with some Econ 101.
We chose the system we have, we can create a new, different, better one if we want to. That's pretty much the core of any point I've made. If you're argument is that we can't, or that we shouldn't, then you need to define why that is, rather than spewing Freshman economics coursework knowledge at people
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
Nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things economists "purport to study". Indeed, nothing you have suggested is outside the realm of things that have actually been tried and can be studied directly.
You can vote to make different trade-offs from what your country currently pursues. You cannot, however, vote for manna to fall from heaven.
There is no political will greater than that which moved millions of desperate Chinese to smelt steel in their backyards. Call it the world's largest experiment of your hypothesis, of the supremacy of the will.
Also, I've actually advocated that some protectionist policy, to actually keep jobs in the U.S. is good.
Don't you think with COL being so low in China and India that it is very likely more and more jobs will move there because it's just more efficient. So, given that COL in those countries is likely to be low for quite some time, how do we keep jobs in the U.S. I doubt you really care, or that you even need to.
None of you have any solutions. You just shout down anyone even making the claim that we can do things differently.
Again, since you're the super-smart expert here, or you're at least pretending to be, then how do we have a world economy that provides everyone with a living wage without depleting our natural resources?
Fundamentally the supply of jobs is not some limited resource to be spread around like butter, flowing apace to the lowest COL. Your insistence on this point suggests that we are not going to have a productive discussion unless we identify the actual source of this disagreement.
As for solutions: fine. Here is one: I propose to build a great castle in the sky, in which a great cornucopia shall spew all our living needs for the rest of eternity. And I shall achieve this via the people's will, for none of your petty science constrains me.
Jobs, and in particular one type of job, is not the ultimate rubric around which all political and economic policy should be organized. If we lost every single last manufacturing job and our standard of living went up, all other things being equal, that'd be a good thing, yes?
It's not exactly an easy problem for one country to solve. A big step towards resolving it would be to have the US (and other first world countries) agree to join a carbon/waste/energy market where you pay to pollute and waste. If the US and others joined, then China wouldn't be able to stay out and companies would no longer be able to avoid environmental regulation by moving overseas.
I have no blessed idea. It is already known that food, water, and accommodation are already enough to meet projected population growth, provided that urbanization and ensuing density can continue apace in the global south: that is, assuming the relative peace and growth that has characterized the post-Cold-War period. Oil is tricky; nuclear has risks. A major problem is convincing people to stop trying to live in places where it is phenomenally costly to live, like deserts; the counterpoint is convincing people who don't live in deserts to accept migrants. You may have to accept the reality that it is deeply unjust that Europe and America have seen fit to deplete nearly all of its natural woodland and yet feel inclined to claim the territory of other nations as all of mankind's, sacrosanct and untouchable. Indonesia is hardly going to stop deforestation at the whim of white men barking commands from their own wholly deforested European plains.
Regardless, you do realize that I don't actually have to have a solution in order to point out that your allocation of finite resources is going to be more inefficient, or more the point, more unjust, yes? It is quite possible to do much worse than merely not proceeding to a glorious new golden age here.
I was referring to the mechanism that the PRC historically used to peg the Yuan at a fixed ration to the dollar. They invest in our currency so that our currency is stronger, keeping theirs comparatively weaker.
@Ronya
I would not particularly trust myself on that front. I know some simple models, but can't point you to a synthesis.
Will the servants in the castle be orcs or robots?
Noone has a solution to your artificial problem because it is basically unsolvable. You are concerned with the well being of Americans, and want them all to have a good standard of living which they work for. The work that many of them can provide is not worth the wages that must be paid to give them that good standard of living, but instead of compensating by making sure that everyone has enough to achieve that standard of living, you want to make sure everyone is paid enough at their job to do so. Our standard of living is only as high as it is because of the efficiencies that our modern economy have discovered, but you want us to discard them all and so have less overall wealth to go around. So people keep working at mandated high wages to produce goods we want them to be able to buy, driving up the price of the goods or resulting in fewer goods actually being produced. The longer you run this macabre pantomime of an economy, the worse everyone's quality of living will get relative to the rest of the world. Do you really not see why an economy based on a government fiat to pay high wages and to only make use of the resources we have here will not allow us to maintain the same quality of life that we have here now when we are taking advantage of other nation's cheap labor and abundant resources?
Totally quoted the wrong person.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
also, shh
Depleting resources is depleting resources, regardless of whether we mandate a living wage or not. The difference is - when we hit peak oil, or run out of uranium, we will hit a supply-side constraint. We will have too few resources to meet demand. At that time, currency for any country that wants oil or uranium - which is every country on earth, more or less - will inflate. Goods and services that require oil or uranium (read: everything) will become more expensive.
At that time, it will inflate for everybody. If we paid people a living wage in the previous years, then the wealth produced during that time will have been distributed more equitably. If we didn't, then it would have been distributed less equitably.
But if you think that not paying people a living wage will result in the slower exhaustion of natural resources, first off I think that's highly idealistic and depends on people in the top strata of global income (first worlders) to curtail their consumption appropriately, which isn't something we've really been good at. Secondly, it assumes that economic development does not bring with it improved efficiency - if a country can't replace their aging coal and oil power plant system with wind and solar because they can't afford to, then stalling their development actually accelerates resource depletion. Third, you're making an empirical claim for which you have shown no evidence.
Finally, and probably most saliently, the position that we shouldn't give people a living wage because of resource depletion is exactly a "fuck you, I got mine" argument. We have eaten our generous slice of the oil pie, so now requiring other countries to stall their development because we might run out of oil is bald-faced selfishness.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Higher wages = increased purchasing power = increased demand = increased production and increasing travel = faster depletion of resources.
Again, being that the American worker is responsible, in a large part, for there even being a first world in the first place, I think they're owed more than what they're getting. The American worker should not be made to compete with near-zero wages. Race to the bottom.
I don't need to understand what you're saying, though I do being that I'm not an idiot, and that you have just been spewing very basic economics, because I have merely been stating that it is possible as sentient humans to create other, better systems if we can figure out how to do so. However, you're one of those people who only factors in what exists rather than what's possible, so I can't discuss this with you, and I probably should never have tried.
Also, again, I am not proposing that anything I have said is an actual solution, I've mostly made abstract statements and claims as to who I think is owed more in the grand scheme of things and how we should treat people who used to enjoy a better life and had it taken from them for the sake of efficiency.
You can't answer most of the questions I've asked because you don't have answers. Your answer is to muddle through the status quo and hope for the best. What, exactly, do you contribute to the discussion? You can't even follow the basic facts of our situation to their conclusion. In the end, we will either need more resources (impossible) or less people (unlikely given FREEEDOOMMMMMMM!!!) or a lot less consumption (unlikely because iPhones and all the wonderful disposable stuff people love and FREEEDOMMMM!!!), or some combination of those, to survive on this planet.
You don't have any answers or anything to contribute beyond stepping on people who make suggestions. I'm done.
the country that has invented the most bacon related products rules
thats how things are
So... the US is the supreme ruler of foreverness... I am cool with this.
First, ronya is talking about a lot more than freshman econ. If I had to guess, I would say that he's either at the end of a Ph.D. program in econ or a freshly minted Ph.D.
Second, if you want to tear down economics as a discipline, you may want to learn the first thing about said discipline. For example, there's an entire field in econ that deals with the questions you're interested in. Here's an article to get you started.
Supply Demand curve has four corner.
Simultaneous Consumption in outward price shift
Evil So Called Economists Like Ronya are educated stupid
There is no Economist on Earth qualified to
teach Simultaneous 4-Demand
Rotating Aggregate Cube Creation Principle,
and therefore, there is no Economist on Earth
worthy of being called a certified Economist.
The American worker is also responsible for much of the resource depletion/pollution in the first place.
People need to decouple Standard of Living, Wages, Employment, and Wealth Distribution. They are not the same. The latter 3 were all 'better' in the 1940s than they are today. Is our SoL higher or lower than it was then?
Going back to that stupid Fox News picture. 99.6% of the poor have a refrigerator. And everyone agreed that that's not a luxury, and having one does not make you not-poor.
from the wiki on fridges:
The first fridge was more of a luxury item than having an industrial pizza oven in your home would be now, and was smaller than your mini-fridge in college.
This is why capitalism is the best system for raising our SoL. The innovations which were once confined to the very rich get pushed down the economic ladder by efficiency improvements. Even if you don't have health insurance, is your access to an MRI worse than it was in the more egalitarian 60s? Or your chances to get Chemo treatment? If you think it's a problem that not everyone can get an MRI, I agree with you. But the solution to that as SKFM keeps saying is redistributing the wealth we are creating via capitalism to assure a basic standard of living, not some bizzaro scheme that will cripple being able to create it.
The issues in the US aren't so much about not everyone being unable to get an MRI, but not everyone being able to afford basic care that used to be affordable. Also: housing and education. We have more wealth overall (because, like you say, capitalism is the best way we know of to generate wealth), but that wealth is poorly distributed.
Hence the reason that a regulated but mostly-free-market economy combined with redistribution of wealth is the model that literally every functional economy has settled on. Everything else is just fiddling with the dials on the amount of regulation and the methods for redistribution.
And it's also why it is retarded that "wealth redistribution" is a bogeyman in US political discourse. Wealth redistribution is inevitable - the only questions are "how" and "how much" and "to whom?"
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Is that graph calculating usage per capita based on actual civilian per-person usage or is it taking US usage and dividing by population? 'cause I'm pretty sure that us having fucking enormous fleets of military vehicles, I-don't-even-know-how-many international airports topping up foreign carrier's fuel tanks, having to ship stuff across one ocean or another to get to and from Asian manufacturers, and trucking goods across a country that's orders of magnitude larger than all of those other folks on the chart besides China all probably weigh pretty heavily into it if it's just US Usage / US Pop. It's not all just folks throwing away a shit ton of WalMart shopping bags.
Might be useful to get back to this.
(1) is a assertion about policies that are viable in the sphere of politics. Economics has less to say about this. Political history does, however: your solution (of... world government? Autarky?) has no demonstrated viability at all, whereas the progressive welfare state has an active existence.
(2) is... a confusion of ideas. The purpose of having an economy is to achieve gains from specialization and trade. Otherwise we would make everything in our own households and trade nothing. But notice that even if we had no economy - if we did, in fact, make everything in our own households - if making things required an endless supply of resources, then regardless of the trade or lack thereof, we would indeed one day run out of these resources and starve. Happily most resources that we are interested in are renewable.
Insofar as trade enable us to use less resources to achieve the same outcomes, where necessary resources are limited we can at least postpone our inevitable doom further into the future.
We do speak often in terms of demand. There is a subtle reason for this, namely that modern capitalist economies are demand-determined in the short run. In English we would say that in capitalist economies, businesses often want to keep selling more stuff at prevailing prices. Businesses continually err on the side of surpluses, not shortages, and labour markets continually err on the side of unemployment, not overemployment, without either spiraling off into absurdity. This accords so well with real-life experience that it is easy to forget that it isn't actually supposed to happen in a perfectly allocated equilibrium; when we go to a shop, we always expect it to want us to buy more stuff, in contrast to an EC10 firm which only desires to sell as much as is profit-maximizing and no more.
If we ever met that demand, however, businesses would eventually adjust their prices higher and we would again be demand-determined. Likewise, if demand suddenly fell, businesses would eventually adjust until we are again only slightly in demand shortfall.
(3) an utopian society of philosopher-kings could still have trade, and the trade of finite resources. Why not? It is not the ill will or ignorance of the people that makes fossil fuels stubbornly take millions of years to form.
Judging by the numbers shown, I think it's just national usage divided by population.
BTW, my understanding (though I might be wrong) is that sea transport is incredibly efficient in terms of miles shipped vs. energy usage. It doesn't take that much energy to move intermodal containers across the ocean; it's once those containers are loaded onto ground transport that you start burning a ton of fuel.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
What if we can't?
Maybe a better question. At is the optimal rate of depletion of natural resources?
Employment might fall at Walmart, but Walmart is somewhat of a monstrosity. It's just not a matter of the business practices, or the quality of the merchandise. It's the experience of shopping there. It's like the store was created by an ADHD person who couldn't decide what he wanted the store to be. And so they don't do anything in particular really well. Most people don't need a store that sells everything, because it's overwhelming. They just need a store that sells the things they need on a given day.
Costco just seems to have a better layout. You have fewer items, higher volume. That makes it a lot easier to do things like stock and inventory, easier to know which brands you're carrying, easier for people to direct themselves through the store. It's also not intended to be a one-stop shop for everything. It's a place where you buy the things you need in bulk, but for the things you don't need in bulk, you go somewhere else. So Walmart is designed to crush all the local stores which means fewer jobs overall, where Costco is designed to encourage them.
Really, when I try to imagine an ideal economy, I'm trying to imagine why we actually need a Walmart. The only major advantage Walmart has is price, by squeezing the employees and by squeezing the suppliers (who must outsource or issue layoffs as a result). But if consumers were more prosperous and could afford to shop elsewhere, then suddenly that advantage isn't as important.
Nicking a chart from wikipedia, is on CO2 rather than strict energy usage but is pretty illustrative:
- Air cargo - .8063 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile
- Truck - 0.1693 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile
- Train - 0.1048 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile
- Sea freight - 0.0403 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile
CptHamilton is saying silly things: one of the reasons Europe uses less energy per capita because it has greater amounts of sea freight (thanks to the highly fractal nature of the European peninsula) than North America does.
Also the rest of the world also has airports (shocking I know!).
Additional in reply to 'whah whah we use more energy from being in the middle of a continent', I'd answer 'so?' as in that case location is a fucking luxury good with attendant costs.
Gandhi led a movement to protest British made clothes which was cheaper and vastly superior in quality, on the grounds that buying homespun clothes was better for the local economy. That was in India, where presumably, consumers would be even more price sensitive than here in America.
Look at software companies that create DRM free software, that is super easy to pirate. Yet, their piracy numbers aren't much higher than their DRM competitors. A lot of customers choose to pay for the software, even though they can easily get it for free. Why? Because they take pride in being able to support the creators. The reason iTunes because successful is because Steve Jobs realized that you were never going to stop people from pirating music if they wanted to pirate music. But he also realized that their were a lot of people who genuinely wanted to support the artists, and at the time, there wasn't a way to do that convenient. So he had to give them a new model to support the artists they like that was easier for them.
I think a lot of people would take pride in buying from companies that are made in America, and companies that treat their employees fairly, if there was a way to market that better. If there was some sort of stamp of approval.
You may be unsurprised to learn that I have no dispute with this logic. If consumers were, in fact, more prosperous, then the economy should (yes) have less inferior goods and one of those inferior goods is the wonderful Walmart experience. Unfortunately you cannot make consumers as a whole more prosperous by merely ejecting the low-wage ones from the picture. The average goes up, but only because you've decided to ignore all the new zeroes. You do achieve an economy without a Walmart, but you also now have a lot of people on the welfare budget bill that you need to think about.