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Guest Post: How The Market Creates Jobs And How The Government Destroys Them
Authored by Walter Block, originally posted at Austrian Economics and Liberty blog,
The Creation of Jobs
If the media tell us that “the opening of XYZ mill has created 1,000 new jobs,” we give a cheer. When the ABC company closes and 500 jobs are lost, we’re sad. The politician who can provide a subsidy to save ABC is almost assured of widespread public support for his work in preserving jobs.
But jobs in and of themselves do not guarantee well-being. Suppose that the employment is to dig huge holes and fill them up again? What if the workers manufacture goods and services that no one wants to purchase? In the Soviet Union, which boasts of giving every worker a job, many jobs are just this unproductive. Production is everything, and jobs are nothing but a means toward that end.
Imagine the Swiss Family Robinson marooned on a deserted South Sea island. Do they need jobs? No, they need food, clothing, shelter, and protection from wild animals. Every job created is a deduction from the limited, precious labor available. Work must be rationed, not created, so that the market can create the most product possible out of the limited supply of labor, capital goods, and natural resources.
The same is true for our society. The supply of labor is limited. We must not allow government to create jobs or we lose the goods and services which otherwise would have come into being. We must reserve precious labor for the important tasks still left undone.
Alternatively, imagine a world where radios, pizzas, jogging shoes, and everything else we might want continuously rained down like manna from heaven. Would we want jobs in such a utopia? No, we could devote ourselves to other tasks—studying, basking in the sun, etc.—that we would undertake for their intrinsic pleasure.
Instead of praising jobs for their own sake, we should ask why employment is so important. The answer is, because we exist amidst economic scarcity and must work to live and prosper. That’s why we should be of good cheer only when we learn that this employment will produce things people actually value, i.e., are willing to buy with their own hard-earned money. And this is something that can only be done in the free market, not by bureaucrats and politicians.
The Destruction of Jobs
But what about unemployment? What if people want to work, but can’t get a job? In almost every case, government programs are the cause of joblessness.
Minimum Wage. The minimum wage mandates that wages be set at a government-determined level. To explain why this is harmful, we can use an analogy from biology: there are certain animals that are weak compared to others. For example, the porcupine is defenseless except for its quills, the deer vulnerable except for its speed.
In economics there are also people who are relatively weak. The disabled, the young, minorities, the untrained—all are weak economic actors. But like the weak animals in biology, they have a compensating advantage: the ability to work for lower wages. When the government takes this ability away from them by forcing up pay scales, it is as if the porcupine were shorn of its quills. The result is unemployment, which creates desperate loneliness, isolation, and dependency.
Consider a young, uneducated, unskilled person, whose productivity is $2.50 an hour in the marketplace. What if the legislature passes a law requiring that he be paid $5 per hour? The employer hiring him would lose $2.50 an hour.
Consider a man and a woman each with a productivity of $10 per hour, and suppose, because of discrimination or whatever, that the man is paid $ 10 per hour and the woman is paid $8 per hour. It is as if the woman had a little sign on her forehead saying, “Hire me and earn an extra $2 an hour.” This makes her a desirable employee even for a sexist boss. But when an equal-pay law stipulates that she must be paid the same as the man, the employer can indulge his discriminatory tendencies and not hire her at all, at no cost to himself.
Comparable Worth. What if government gets the bright idea that nurses and truck drivers ought to be paid the same wage because their occupations are of “intrinsically” equal value? It orders that nurses’ wages be raised to the same level, which creates unemployment for women.
Working Conditions. Laws which force employers to provide certain types of working conditions also create unemployment. For example, migrant fruit and vegetables pickers must have hot and cold running water and modern toilets in the temporary cabins provided for them. This is economically equivalent to wage laws because, from the point of view of the employer, working conditions are almost indistinguishable from money wages. And if the government forces him to pay more, he will have to hire fewer people.
Unions. When the government forces businesses to hire only union workers, it discriminates against non-union workers, causing them to be at a severe disadvantage or permanently unemployed. Unions exist primarily to keep out competition. They are a state-protected cartel like any other.
Employment Protection. Employment protection laws, which mandate that no one can be fired without due process, are supposed to protect employees. However, if the government tells the employer that he must keep the employee no matter what, he will tend not to hire him in the first place. This law, which appears to help workers, instead keeps them from employment. And so do employment taxes and payroll taxes, which increase costs to businesses and discourage them from hiring more workers.
Payroll Taxes. Payroll taxes like Social Security impose heavy monetary and administrative costs on businesses, drastically increasing the marginal cost of hiring new employees.
Unemployment Insurance. Government unemployment insurance and welfare cause unemployment by subsidizing idleness. When a certain behavior is subsidized—in this case not working—we get more of it.
Licensing. Regulations and licensing also cause unemployment. Most people know that doctors and lawyers must have licenses. But few know that ferret breeders, falconers, and strawberry growers must also have them. In fact, government regulates over 1,000 occupations in all 50 states. A woman in Florida who ran a soup kitchen for the poor out of her home was recently shut down as an unlicensed restaurant, and many poor people now go hungry as a result.
When the government passes a law saying certain jobs cannot be undertaken without a license, it erects a legal barrier to entry. Why should it be illegal for anyone to try their hand at haircutting? The market will supply all the information consumers need.
When the government bestows legal status on a profession and passes a law against competitors, it creates unemployment. For example, who lobbies for the laws which prevent just anyone from giving a haircut? The haircutting industry—not to protect the consumer from bad haircuts, but to protect themselves against competition.
Peddling. Laws against street peddlers prevent people from selling food and products to people who want them. In cities like New York and Washington, D.C., the most vociferous supporters of anti-peddling laws are established restaurants and department stores.
Child Labor. There are many jobs that require little training—such as mowing lawns—which are perfect for young people who want to earn some money. In addition to the earnings, working also teaches young people what a job is, how to handle money, and how to save and maybe even invest. But in most places, the government discriminates against teenagers and prevents them from participating in the free enterprise system. Kids can’t even have a street-corner lemonade stand.
The Federal Reserve. By bringing about the business cycle, Federal Reserve money creation causes unemployment. Inflation not only raises prices, it also misallocates labor. During the boom phase of the trade cycle, businesses hire new workers, many of whom are pulled from other lines of work by the higher wages. The Fed subsidy to these capital industries lasts only until the bust. Workers are then laid off and displaced.
The Free Market. The free market, of course, does not mean utopia. We live in a world of differing intelligence and skills, of changing market preferences, and of imperfect information, which can lead to temporary, market-generated unemployment, which Mises called “catallactic.” And some people choose unemployment by holding out for a higher paying job.
But as a society, we can insure that everyone who wants to work has a chance to do so by repealing minimum wage law, comparable worth rules, working condition laws, compulsory union membership, employment protection, employment taxes, payroll taxes, government unemployment insurance, welfare, regulations, licensing, anti-peddling laws, child-labor laws, and government money creation. The path to jobs that matter is the free market.
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You didn't destroy that...
The banks still attempt to corner the market when it is free.
The banks tell you what the market is... The only winning move is NOT TO PLAY...
Can't EVER have a free market when MONEY is INTEREST-BEARING DEBT. First STOP THE USURY.
Absolutely true, as there can be no truly free market without a free market in money. Instead, the monetary fascism of the Federal Reserve lies at the core of a system so rotten it can only be fixed by eradicating it, by which I don't just mean central banking but the Central State.
I'm starting to wonder if there ever has been such a thing as a 'free market'. By its virtue, a free market will lead to the concentration of wealth and power as players compete, inevitibly turning itself into an oligarchy.
Quote from article:
But as a society, we can insure that everyone who wants to work has a chance to do so by repealing minimum wage law, comparable worth rules, working condition laws, compulsory union membership, employment protection, employment taxes, payroll taxes, government unemployment insurance, welfare, regulations, licensing, anti-peddling laws, child-labor laws, and government money creation. The path to jobs that matter is the free market.
In a free market, none of these rules would exist. But some of these rules are useful in that they theoretically protect society from the concentration of wealth and power. It's not that success should be punished. However, the success of some should not come at the expense of innovation.
it isn't about being productive.
it's about being busy.
and having a supervisor.
without those two items, where would you be?
honestly!
Guest Post: How The Market Creates Jobs And How The Government Destroys Them
I guess this means we're about to see the usual deluge of logic-free ad homs in response, from the usual collection of spittle-flecked laborites who will forego attempting to address any of Walter Block's excellent reasoning in favor of wanking on about the evils of Ayn Rand and her poor taste in hats. Throw in some strawmen about Alan Greenspan - he was a libertarian, right? and you're well on your way to winning the debate! At least, you would be if you were back at HuffPo, which is the very touchstone of enlightened thinking, no?
'But if we took away employee rights, employers could demand blow jobs from their employees every morning!' I've got news for you - they can do that now... and if you say no, they can successfully fire you for any number of made-up reasons if they're careful enough, and been smart enough to only proposition you in private. Of course, because it's so hard to set up a new business as a direct result of the very regulations that you think are protecting you as an employee, it'll be harder for you to find a job with an employer who would treat you better. Remember reading all those autobiographies, where ordinary people were fired or left an employer one morning, and got another job with another employer later that same day? Why do you think that's virtually impossible now? The regulations - which were written by corporate puppets in the first place - have made barriers to entry for new businesses almost impossibly high.
'Without minimum wage laws, there will be a race to the bottom, and we'll all be working for a penny an hour!' I love this one. If you think employers have the ability to drive wages as low as they like, why stop at a penny an hour? Why not a penny a day? Week? Year? Lifetime? You appear to think there is no competition amongst employers for employees. Well, if it's so non-existent, why isn't everyone - ALL doctors, ALL lawyers, ALL artists, ALL tradesmen - earning 'minimum wage'?
'When you take away minimum wage, they pay their staff less, but does the cost cutting result in lowered prices of goods? No, it just lines the pockets of the greedy bosses!' I've got news for you - competition is a real, driving force in business: except when a corporation's income is protected by government mandate. Try opening a business yourself, and you'll quickly discover that if you don't pass any cost savings onto your customers quickly enough, your competitors certainly will, gaining market share at your expense.
etc.
Not so, mm, as a truly free market would have to state for an oligarchy to entrench itself, genuine competition assuring that monopoly power would be fleeting, at best, amid a relentless process of Schumpeterian "creative destruction."
But as a society, we can insure that everyone who wants to work has a chance to do so by repealing minimum wage law, comparable worth rules, working condition laws, compulsory union membership, employment protection, employment taxes, payroll taxes, government unemployment insurance, welfare, regulations, licensing, anti-peddling laws, child-labor laws, and government money creation.
Ah yes, another guest post featuring the primitive mind at work.
Indeed, "the State" and "the Austrian" have developed a true symbiotic relationship...
in which both depend upon the other to validate and give life to their existence...without it's corporatist cartel financed critics, the State would probably 'wither away' by itself for lack of attention...
without "the State" and it's socialist henchmen, the Austrians would surely 'wither away' for lack of a raison d'etre...plus ça change, plus c'est la même!
Indeed, "the State" and "the Austrian" have developed a true symbiotic relationship...
This is not new, supposed 'free market' guy Milton Friedman who is often associated with the Austrian school was closely tied to the state and fully supported the federal reserve manipulating money supply to achieve predetermined goals. Followed by another 'free market' proponent (and Ayn Rand disciple) Alan Greenspan. Both of them had a huge impact on fiscal policy of the last 50 yrs.
socialist henchmen
They're not socialists, there hasn't been anyone even vaguely associated with true socialism in public political American life since Eugene Debs.
Read up on what socialism actually means hint: it's not the Nazis, Stalin or Engels. See: Tommy Douglas
Socialism...read up on who actually pushed for it in the beginning:
hint: it's not populist social reformers of the Prairie kind...
See Fabian Society...and the twisted minds of a group of idle tools of the the emergent rentier class of monopolistic Ashkenazi moneychangers who relieved the English and Continental nobility of the worry of excerising power or privilege; satanist scum antecedents of the same one's who have enthroned the Kenyan as the puppet price of the pharisees...
that's "Socialism" in Action Chumly...not gentle theory from gentle men of the forgotten West...
Concentrating on the Fabians doesn't make any sense. Anyway I was referring to socialism for it's primary unifying idea of worker owned means of production.
But as far as socialist governments, the first functioning socialist government in North America was headed by Tommy Douglas. And he wasn't from the West (unless you consider Scotland the west).
Some of their achievements:
When Mr. Douglas took office in 1944, Saskatchewan had a debt of $218-million - 38 per cent of provincial GDP. By 1949, he had reduced the debt to $70-million. By 1953, he had eliminated it. By 1961, when he left office, he had produced 17 successive budget surpluses. By reducing the debt, and thereby reducing interest costs, he was able to spend more on public services - without raising taxes.
Mr. Douglas did introduce the country's first universal-coverage hospital insurance program in 1947 - the same year in which Social Credit premier Ernest Manning introduced full-coverage medicare (covering hospital and doctor costs) for all senior citizens in Alberta. Even in Saskatchewan, Mr. Douglas didn't start from scratch: Thirty years earlier, the province had established municipally operated hospitals authorized to provide free service without regard to people's ability to pay.
"I think that there is value in having every family, and every individual, make some individual contribution," he said. "I think it has a psychological value. I think it keeps the public aware of the cost and gives people a sense of personal responsibility. Even if we could finance [medicare]without a per capita tax, I personally would advise against it."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/tommy-douglas-the-pragmatic-so...
Tommy Douglas eventually had a fall from grace, why? Opposing the war measures act.
"The Act, enacted previously only for wartime purposes, imposed extreme limitations on civil liberties, and gave the police and military vastly expanded powers for arresting and detaining suspects, usually with little to no evidence required."
Yes, he's a hero of mine.
Sir:
I most sincerely understand and appreciate your regard for a Prairie Son, and a man who treated both the polity at large and his own constituents with the respect required of a 'public servant'...as elected officials were formerly understood to be.
But these are not his times, nor are we equals to those who worked and lived within those times, for far we have fallen, and fallen indeed directly because of the Fabians and their ilk to whom I referred. The socialism which warms the hackles of your heart is a mirage...a tender virginal image behind lurks the sneering, scornful visage of the talmudist satanist collectivizing communist...
who depends always upon the gentle nature and innate goodness of the gentile who they dupe(I'm being extremely kind in this characterization in deference to your evident sincerity of purpose)into becoming agents of their own and their societies' destruction. It may not 'make sense' but it does make for a lot of misery on this planet which could be a paradise for us all.
But these are not his times, nor are we equals to those who worked and lived within those times, for far we have fallen, and fallen indeed directly because of the Fabians and their ilk to whom I referred. The socialism which warms the hackles of your heart is a mirage...a tender virginal image behind lurks the sneering, scornful visage of the talmudist satanist collectivizing communist...
I was just pointing out an example of what was an active socialist government (very rare, the Fabians didn't run governments) that worked out very well and whose initiatives still positively affect Canadians.
I don't actually believe in state-run socialism as I don't believe in states. You're not going to get many Tommy Douglas quality people, especially in politics. But I think workers can organize following his model - something that exists all across the world today in business co-ops.
Production itself has moved to a socialist model all on it's own accord, but that's another argument..
whose initiatives still positively affect Canadians
...especially if you're into pain and suffering:
"Canadians are being forced to wait almost 4 ½ months, on average, to receive surgical care, prolonging the pain and suffering patients and their families are forced to endure," said Mark Rovere."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2011/12/12/wait-times-surgery-fraser...
Coming from a Fraser Institute study - anything they say should be immediately tossed in the garbage.
Not to mention the Canadian system has been slowly privatized which has seen medical care co-incidentally go down in quality & costs go up. There's a lot of thought in Canada that there's a determined effort to make medical care nonfunctionable in order to convince people it needs to be privatized, but that's just crazy conspiracy talk!
There's currently a major effort replace universal healthcare in Canada with a model much like the American system so you see a lot of similar 'studies.'
Virtually every poll conducted in Canada has shown Canadians very much still like their healthcare. Personally, I also pay for private insurance coverage in Canada as changes to the system have made it somewhat necessary.
You should be an Obama spin doctor,
"There's been a lot of thought that there's a determined effort to make Solyndra Solar look like a failure in order to convince people that the government should stay out of the business world."
Pretty slick.
"There's been a lot of thought that there's a determined effort to make Solyndra Solar look like a failure in order to convince people that the government should stay out of the business world."
Pretty slick.
Solyndra was a $ gift to campaign donors - totally different issue.
Healthcare in Canada on the other hand has many decades of data showing a system with good results and comparable costs to similar countries and of course better results and substantially cheaper than the US.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jun/30/healthcare-spending-...
The World Health Organization ranks the U.S. system as the highest in cost, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health among 191 member nations included in a study
James_Cole strikes again!
This is not new, supposed 'free market' guy Milton Friedman who is often associated with the Austrian school...
If he's only a 'supposed' free market guy -ie, meaning that he's not really in favor of free markets - why would he be 'often' associated with the Austrian School (many of whom are out-and-out anarcho-capitalists) who are about as 'free market' as you can get?
As it happens, no one wholly associates Milton Friedman with the Austrians, at least no one worth listening to, exactly because he was a monetarist. He believed in wholesale government intervention in the money supply.
Friedman is most closely associated with the Chicago School.
As it happens, no one wholly associates Milton Friedman with the Austrians, at least no one worth listening to, exactlybecause he was a monetarist. He believed in wholesale government intervention in the money supply.
Friedman is most closely associated with the Chicago School.
That's why I said 'supposed' and 'often associated with' because the people who've done the most damage to the US economy in the last 50 yrs all claim to be huge 'free market' people.
I'm not anti-free markets, I just see it as practically impossible to move from the past few thousand years of human history to a anarcho free market model.
Everyone who reads what I say next will have a brain meltdown, but I figure the only path to a semi 'free market' is a socialist production model. If people don't individually have access to production then a free market is impossible. Fortunately, technological evolution is making socialism in this sense practically an inevitability, but not state socialism - to make the distinction.
James_Cole strikes again!
...but I figure the only path to a semi 'free market' is a socialist production model. If people don't individually have access to production...
Do you not know what socialism is? It's the State owning the means of production. How is the state owning the means of production - ie, it has the MONOPOLY on production - going to give people individual 'access to production'?
What a load of gibberish. We're not having a 'brain meltdown' out here, James; you are.
Do you not know what socialism is? It's the State owning the means of production.
Wrong.
Google is your friend:
Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy.[1] "Social ownership" may refer to cooperative enterprises, common ownership, state ownership, or citizen ownership of equity.[2] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them.[
There's absolutely nothing preventing people starting up cooperative companies now to compete in the marketplace.
So kindly explain to us exactly what you mean. Or is requesting you to clarify your wishy-washy utterances just another example of old-fashioned 'binary' thinking?
Sometimes I get the impression that a lot of Libertarian pundits are actually just TPTB shills putting these ideas out, worded as such, to turn off the docile R and D voters from alternatives.
They'll say "I'm for open borders", with no caveat that if you come, you would work and you get no bennies, and no vote for 5-10 years.
They'll say "Legalize all drugs" but not include that all citizens could get to have an unlimited carry, open or concealed, to defend themselves and society would leave you in the gutter for the charity ward if you fucked yourself up on shit and couldn't pay for it.
They'll say "deregulate totally", but won't condition that on a strict PERSONAL liability standard with a robust court system to efficiently, vigorously and blindly serve justice to those injured or who've suffered fraud. (And by personal, they would be no more corporate or government shield to hide behind for an individuals wrongdoing).
Without outlining in detail how the Libertarian or little government model would operate, most rational people look at the memes they put out and think they're nuts and a threat to their statist cocoon.
deregulation lead to the current state of affairs-it is called facism. when the ptb make the rules using enforcable laws to fleece commoners.
drop the labels and ideology and talk straight-you sound like a fucking politician. call them what they are-power hungry ass wipes.
control freaks- narcissistic fucks; zuckerfuck is a perfect example or soros-but pleeze talk straight or take your college dorm room chat elsewhere. ideology is for loosers-accomplishes nothing and distracts...
until common peoples rise up, this gains momentum till you get about 25 percent of your labor, as yours.
keep an eye on france as they are at the limit of self imposed control that is about to backlash. some peoples are weaker than others - iceland vs greece. french will fight when cornered. puss ass mutes called americans appear to be easily molified with trinkets while ass raped repeatedly and will (pavlovs dog style) get on all fours repeatedly...
whole lotta people suffer what appears to be avoidable by the intelligent types that give a shit and didn't watch idol or cnbs or the local news...
It is not de-regulation that has led to the current state of arrairs, but rather selective (over) regulation.
Over the past decades the body of Statutory and Administrative law in the US has grown from thousands of pages to hudreds of thousands of pages, that is NOT de-regulation.
deregulation lead to the current state of affairs-it is called facism...
LOL, yes, those anarcho-capitalists Mussolini and Hitler! How I remember - with considerable nostalgia, I might add - when they abolished fiat currency! Pared their militaries down to the bone! Freed up employment regulations, meaning that universities could employ Jews again, after all those years of oppressive Weimar Anti-Semitism! etc.
Are you genuinely this stupid?
Libertarian, Republican, Democrat,...................
By whatever label you choose to slap on any ideology the label is meaningless once those chosen to uphold it's values are not held accountable.
We are all at fault in this little game.
Our money is now controlled by what our own "Justice system" admits it can not control. We are a nation of laws. How did it get that way among a nation made up of democrats AND republicans?
"WE THE PEOPLE" became as corrupted and failed to fulfill our oblilgation to be forever vigilant. All biased ideological disussions here are nothing more than mental masterbation until we the people get of our asses and hold aourselves and those we have "elected" ACCOUNTABLE.
Call it what ever you want. Democracy, socialist, totalitarian, statist, whatever becasue in reality it is simply FUCKED UP!
whoops
most rational people look at the memes they (libertarians) put out and think they're nuts and a threat to their statist cocoon
Gotta love that statist cocoon. 46 million on food stamps up from 26 million in 2007. And libertarians wanna change things? Yeah, they're nuts alright. /sarc
the mind reverts to survival when allowed to. turn the shit off...
"Imagine the Swiss Family Robinson marooned on a deserted South Sea island. Do they need jobs? No, they need food, clothing, shelter, and protection from wild animals. Every job created is a deduction from the limited, precious labor available."
So right off the bat he kills his whole post with faulty reasoning.
Procuring clothing, shelter, and protection are jobs!
And is he suggesting we currently have a limited labor pool?
Working condition laws, Unions, Payroll taxes, Child labor laws.
Anyone ever ask why these things came about in the first place?
Totally free markets is a myth. Total freedom is myth. Man fucks these things up everytime.
Spend sometime in a grove picking oranges with migrant workers. Where they take Social security out of your cash wages yet never ask for you ss number. Where if you don't give 13 boxes to a ten box bin you are moved to a less productive grove.
We are supposed to be a nation of laws. Deal with the corruption of the current corporate/government alliance then talk to me about free markets.
Nothing but nothing works when corrupted.
I can only assume Tyler posts such crap as this cause he knows it will get a heap of page hits and numerous comments and arguments going. Which of course is good for any website.
Force employers to pay the least productive workers MORE than the most productive! Awesome plan man.
Hey, how come there are so few employers around...?
The banks can only corner the market with counterfeited money created through "fractional reserves'"
It's like an inverted pyramid of counterfeit starting with the Federal Reserve creating money out of nothing.
Please stop your communist shit.
Its a zero sum game. everybody is so opportunist in approach.
http://www.marketexpress.in/2013/04/a-peek-into-the-high-stakes-of-world...
You have to fight to keep the fairness in the market. That is the real lesson. It is a nonstop battle, you can't slack off for 20 seconds or you get like what happened to Mt Gox the other day. Freedom is a constant battle, it requires morals, responsiblity and dillgence, now you know why people are so quick to give it up in this society. It is not the system that sucks but the people and the way they've been conditioned from the cradle to adulthood by the state through the traditional control mechanisms. The government is not some vacumn, the people in it come from the same towns you live in, schools you go to, watch the same tv you do, read the same news. If we ain't the problem then they went bad somewhere along the way.
The government is destroying every market through manipulation.
The cost of that will be the destruction of free markets and the loss
of confidence in the dollar. This will lead to the downfall of the U.S.
world supremacy.
Big jobs make my head hurt.
yes sir, the flood of dollars will be the undoing
bond bubble bursts and stawks plummet. price rise very fast and quickly spirals out of control
and bens mop aint big enuf
Its the game they play
http://www.marketexpress.in/2013/04/a-peek-into-the-high-stakes-of-world...
I lol'd
If everyone has a job and can support themselves, then who would vote for the politicians to do their job?
Have you ever tried living on the street and keeping your tailored silk suit freshly pressed? It's basically impossible.
They need atleast 40% unemployed or sucking at their teets or they will be out of the job.
I want to be exposed to dangerous workplaces, have no minimum wage, be fired for not agreeing to be sodomized by my boss, and no organized labor. I want aggressive squeegie men cleaning my windshield at every intersection. I want to put children back to work in factories.
Lower wages are good for everyone.
Higher wages are good for some, and very bad for those with no wages.
When children actually did work in factories in the industrial revolution the child mortality rate dropped dramatically because they could actually contribute to the family income and were "worth" something...
When children actually did work in factories in the industrial revolution the child mortality rate dropped dramatically because they could actually contribute to the family income and were "worth" something...
What about up until the great depression when child labour was still common in the US? Or how about todays child labourers on US farms, child mortality rate 'dropping dramatically' for hundreds of years I guess lol
A few hundred more years of child labour and the death rate will be totally excellent!
In both cases, if there wasn't an opportunity to work, their death rates would rise, or would have risen, dramatically.
Work that emotional side though...
In both cases, if there wasn't an opportunity to work, their death rates would rise, or would have risen, dramatically.
No study I've heard of has demonstrated a reduction in child mortality in countries who have common child labour. However, there are strong negative correlations - poor health, cyclical poverty, lack of basic education etc.
James_Cole strikes again!
Dickhead, they have child labour in those countries because they're poor, not the other way around.
In those societies, if their children can't produce, their children starve. They don't have the excess production or capital to fund children to sit on their asses all day learning stuff that will only become useful after 5 or 6 years. They'd starve in the meantime. So, yeah, go ahead and ban child labour in India... and be responsible for millions of deaths.
Banning child labour in rich countries like ours is futile, because - after centuries of capital investment in our economic structure - children are worth more after educating them than using them to sew turnips by hand in competition with a diesel-powered tractor that can do it a thousand times as fast. But yes, keep on believing that the only reason I send my children to school rather than up a chimney is because Big Brother forbids it.
Are you genuinely this stupid?
""In those societies, if their children can't produce, their children starve. They don't have the excess production or capital to fund children to sit on their asses all day learning stuff that will only become useful after 5 or 6 years. They'd starve in the meantime. So, yeah, go ahead and ban child labour in India... and be responsible for millions of deaths."
They have plenty of American Capital and the populations to produce. However if you render your population crippled by age 30 from working in deplorable conditions so American consumers can get an iphone for 5 dollars less (so Apple can maintain a 35 percent profit margin last I looked) then you insure you will have a chronically poor country to supply American corporate greed.
But then hey it's all cool. Lay down with communist dogs then call yourself the beacon of Freedom!
Indians are building iPhones? Their government is communist? Who knew???
I think you'll find that iPhones are being made by the Chinese, who do have child-labor laws, as well as the infrastucture (millions of schools, teachers, and excess productivity) to support putting their children through an education system.
Try again.
Dickhead, they have child labour in those countries because they're poor, not the other way around.
Cyclical poverty, read about it.
In those societies, if their children can't produce, their children starve.
Ah, the curiosities of a simpleton's mind. For the brain dead I guess it makes sense to look at an isolated situation in it's present circumstnace only and make the most immediate simplisitic assumption ignoring the factors which have created the situation and the factors which may change it. And then applying said assumption over an entire billion person population lol
after centuries of capital investment in our economic structure - children are worth more after educating them than using them to sew turnips by hand in competition with a diesel-powered tractor that can do it a thousand times as fast.
Why are children worth more after educating? Because they turn into adults!
Within a couple decades there will be almost no need for any manual human labour, so what to do with all the low skill workers? Following your simpleton logic perhaps everyone should turn to thievery! Thievery or starvation! It's all binary man!!
Oh, it's cyclical poverty, is it? You're saying all those Indian peasant children used to go to school rather than till the fields?
How are these people going to send their children to school when i) they can't afford to feed them while they're studying and no longer producing, ii) when they haven't the millions of schools that would be required, or iii) the millions of teachers required to teach them all? The only reason we don't have child labour in the West is because, after years of capitalism, we have all these things; not because Big Brother forbade our kids to work.
No, I guess in the 'brilliant' mind of James_Cole, all these factors are irrelevant. 'Let them be educated' said James_Cole, and It Was So.
You're saying all those Indian peasant children used to go to school rather than till the fields?
Nope, not what I'm saying.
How are these people going to send their children to school when i) they can't afford to feed them while they're studying and no longer producing, ii) when they haven't the millions of schools that would be required, or iii) the millions of teachers required to teach them all?
Another totally separate argument.
The only reason we don't have child labour in the West is because, after years of capitalism, we have all these things; notbecause Big Brother forbade our kids to work.
You do have child labour in the west (including the USA).Where you do you get this nonsense? Child mortality rates dropped notably in the early 20th century due to several things but the main ones were improved child bearing techniques including sterilization of equipment including during child birth, improved sanitation and access to clean water, and immunizations.
Try looking/thinking a little more deeply. Clue: 17th/18th/19th centuries... how did child mortality before industrialisation (when the vast majority of people were out physically working on the land) compare with child mortality later, when children had more value as labour in factories? This was before 'modern' sanitation and medicine had kicked in, remember?
Fuck and have lots of children and put them all to work in factories. After all, they are nothing more than a commodity. Besides we have so many jobs available and no one to fill them it's the only option left.
I'll be back as soon as I shoot my kid for being so non productive. Cause after all I want all in my family contributing to the corprate/government good.
You can't shoot your kid silly! Daddy government took your gun away, remember? Daddy knows best.
Fuck and have lots of children and put them all to work in factories. After all, they are nothing more than a commodity. Besides we have so many jobs available and no one to fill them it's the only option left.
I'll be back as soon as I shoot my kid for being so non productive. Cause after all I want all in my family contributing to the corprate/government good.
I'm afraid it's pretty clear that these cultures do not view their children in the same way we do. Hence widespread female infanticide, contracting children out as indentured labour, or selling them off to the sex trade. Why? Because they produce more children than they can feed... and if they don't have a very hard-headed attitude to getting rid of some of them, they risk losing all of them.
And banning child labour actually makes their situations worse:
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/child-labor-or-child-prostitution
which is all pretty obvious if you can be bothered to disengage your emotions long enough to engage your brain.
And banning child labour actually makes their situations worse:
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/child-labor-or-child-prostitution
Lol was joking about your binary arguments earlier and here you are with the chief proponents of straw-man binaries the Cato institute!
Their pro sweatshop arguments are great - sweatshop workers totally benefit from that style of employment UNLESS you look at the situations that moved them into the sweatshops OR what happens to them when the sweatshops close AND you weigh comparisons only on pure monetary terms.
which is all pretty obvious if you can be bothered to disengage your emotions long enough to engage your brain.
The 'pretty obvious' is almost always wrong - esp when it comes to complex issues, try to step beyond your extremely limited intuition, though to be fair some people are unable to. Religious folks come to mind...
What I'm getting from you is endless disagreement but no attempt at refutation.... presumably because you simply haven't the ability to do so.
Their pro sweatshop arguments are great - sweatshop workers totally benefit from that style of employment UNLESS you look at the situations that moved them into the sweatshops OR what happens to them when the sweatshops close AND you weigh comparisons only on pure monetary terms.
One last time, simpleton. Here's the argument. Their parents are too poor to feed them while they're not actively producing something. 'Sweatshops' (nice emotive term you've chosen there, BTW) offer their parents more income than sending them off to be child prostitutes or turnip sowers. So they send them to sweatshops... and maybe earn enough to send some of the other children to school, something they'd never been able to do before. Big Brother comes along and says, oooh, no, you musn't exploit children by making them sew clothes... the result being they wind up on the streets as prostitutes. Again.
So, if you can, refute this line of reasoning; and no, tossing around accusations of 'binary thinking' and being 'religious' are not refutations, dickweed.
What I'm getting from you is endless disagreement but no attempt at refutation.... presumably because you simply haven't the ability to do so.
Your 'arguments' so far (and in this instance as well) are totally invalid, so I basically just point out logical fallacies.
Here's the argument. Their parents are too poor to feed them while they're not actively producing something. 'Sweatshops' (nice emotive term you've chosen there, BTW) offer their parents more income than sending them off to be child prostitutes or turnip sowers. So they send them to sweatshops... and maybe earn enough to send some of the other children to school, something they'd never been able to do before. Big Brother comes along and says, oooh, no, you musn't exploit children by making them sew clothes... the result being they wind up on the streets as prostitutes.
This is a question begging fallacy. You've set up a hypothetical that explicitly supports your conclusion without justifying any of the parts.
Give a real case study of child labour leading to a higher quality of living over a prolonged period of time.
Or simply give examples of countries where child labour is currently of benefit to the economy and we can have an actual reality based debate without pre-drawn conclusions.
Your 'arguments' so far (and in this instance as well) are totally invalid, so I basically just point out logical fallacies.
Oh, if only you could! But no, we get endless equivocations and syllogisms - because you simply will not/cannot refute the points I've made
Give a real case study of child labour leading to a higher quality of living over a prolonged period of time.
You mean: besides every single developing nation throughout history, including the US & UK, when they were developing economies? Or are you going to equivocate now over the use of the word 'prolonged'?
Or simply give examples of countries where child labour is currently of benefit to the economy and we can have an actual reality based debate without pre-drawn conclusions.
I'll tell you what, you intellectually dishonest sophist; why do you think parents send their children off to work? Because THAT'S the reality; they do. Why do you think that is? Because it's of benefit to them.
Time to put up or shut up, loser.
You mean: besides every single developing nation throughout history, including the US & UK, when they were developing economies? Or are you going to equivocate now over the use of the word 'prolonged'?
We have a different definition of 'case study.'
See wiki: A case study (also known as a case report) is an intensive analysis of an individual unit (e.g., a person, group, or event) stressing developmental factors in relation to context.
I'll tell you what, you intellectually dishonest sophist; why do you think parents send their children off to work? Because THAT'S the reality; they do. Why do you think that is? Because it's of benefit to them.
I'm saying put it into context.
Time to put up or shut up, loser.
Child Labour is directly linked to poverty, everyone can agree on that. Countries with high prevalence of child labour are generally conflict countries with high rates of poverty.
Persistence of child labour is consistent with poor access to education & poor local government representation / lack of infrastructure & often seen in rural areas.
Let's look at Vietnam for instance because we all know it's recent history. After the Vietnam war the country was devastated, poverty & child labour were both rampant. Yet in the 90s child labour started to go down as the country entered back into world markets more robustly & GDP went up.
Yet child labour persists..
Putting these groups together yields an estimate of almost 1.3 million 6-17 year-olds in child labour, over six percent of this age group.
The United States Department of States Human Rights Report on Trafficking in Persons states that Vietnam is a source and destination country for women and children trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
US State Department also points to the existence of child commercial sexual exploitation in major urban centres in Vietnam and involving Vietnamese children in locations outside the country. Many of the estimated 15,000 to 20,000 prostitutes in Phnom Penh, for example, are believed to be Vietnamese girls and women
Those returning to their villages faced social ostracisation and sometimes permanent marginalistion.
Involvement in work appears to interfere with children‘s ability to attend school, underscoring the importance of child labour as a barrier to achieving Education For All.
At age 11, for example, the school life expectancy of a working children is about half (three years) that of a non working student. The gap in terms of school life expectancy is larger in urban areas, indicating that urban employment is even less compatible with education than rural work.
Working children students also appear more likely to attend poor quality schools, placing them at further disadvantage.
Education of household head. The effect of an increase of parents‘ education levels on the reduction of child labour is strong and positive. Children from households where the head has primary education are 5 percentage points less likely to work exclusively, and 8 percentage points more likely to attend school exclusively, than children from households where the head has no education.
http://www.ucw-project.org/attachment/child_labour_Vietnam20110627_12542...
http://www.businessinsider.com/countries-worst-child-labor-risks-2012-1?...
...Child Labour is directly linked to poverty, everyone can agree on that.
Well, obviously. But it's the causality of the link that is relevant, here; the poor cannot afford to feed children who are not producing.
... lots of folderol with regards to the Vietnamese...
The argument isn't whether it's a good idea to educate your kids, sophist. That goes without saying. The argument is whether it's a good idea to ban child labour in societies where large numbers of families are too poor to put their children through school; not whether 'society' or 'the economy' would be better off if only the poor weren't so poor that they couldn't afford to educate them. Duh!
Nice try, but if that's the very best you can muster I will just accept you've given up but don't have the honesty to admit you've lost the argument. Sucks to be you! Good night.
The argument is whether it's a good idea to ban child labour in societies where large numbers of families are too poor to put their children through school; not whether 'society' or 'the economy' would be better off if only the poor weren't so poor that they couldn't afford to educate them. Duh!
That was never the argument. Point out one place where I brought up banning child labour & suggested it was a solution to the negative affects of child labour.
The original argument was about child mortality being reduced because of child labour during the industrial revolution making children 'worth' something (ignoring that child labour had existed long before the industrial revolution.
Then it went like this (me in bold):
No study I've heard of has demonstrated a reduction in child mortality in countries who have common child labour. However, there are strong negative correlations - poor health, cyclical poverty, lack of basic education etc.
And you went on to make this silly statement:
I'm afraid it's pretty clear that these cultures do not view their children in the same way we do. Hence widespread female infanticide, contracting children out as indentured labour, or selling them off to the sex trade. Why? Because they produce more children than they can feed... and if they don't have a very hard-headed attitude to getting rid of some of them, they risk losing all of them.
You didn't bother defending any of your points with relevant citations / facts and insisted I make my case. So I present actual facts which back up everything I've said and you don't say a single thing about it other than I've 'given up' the argument...
Start your own company.
When you do that, you'll realize that the government isn't interested in protecting the worker or the average person, all they are interested in, is controlling you.
If the government was limited to preventing child labor and rape, I wouldn't bother. But what the government is doing is preventing people from creating business. It's a nightmare of paperwork and red tape. The purpose of government regulations is to prevent competition from forming, after all, business pays to put these scumbags in power for a reason. It's not as if the banking system is giving campaign contributions to do anything you're talking about - they bribe the government so they won't be harassed as they steal from you, and destroy legitimate business.
If the government was limited to preventing child labor and rape, I wouldn't bother. But what the government is doing is preventing people from creating business. It's a nightmare of paperwork and red tape. The purpose of government regulations is to prevent competition from forming, after all, business pays to put these scumbags in power for a reason. It's not as if the banking system is giving campaign contributions to do anything you're talking about - they bribe the government so they won't be harassed as they steal from you, and destroy legitimate business.
This is all true to different degrees, but is also a SEPARATE FUCKING ISSUE. Maybe you were just stating this for the sake of stating it, but a lot of people can't understand anything but black and white.
In simple terms - because regulation can be bad, doesn't mean regulation itself IS bad.
In even simpler terms, what makes vice or virtue of 'regulation' is who is doin the 'regulating'....
pagin Mr. Invisible Hand....please be the market's Imaginary Friend! Agin!
Nice exchange here. I even learned some things.
I tend to desire free markets. I also tend towards absolutism.
The truth is, there are not, and never have been free markets as an absolute. There has never been socialism as a pure system.
Any and every socio-economic system will be subject to the whims and desires of those who wrest control..... Even Anarchy, my fellow absolutists.
Corruption will always be among us, even within ourselves.
All that said, I believe we have moved too close to fascism. There are socialistic elements, and free market elements within our socio-economic system, but we are knocking at the gates of fascism the loudest.
There is no moral compass. I think poverty and difficult living actually breed an ethic required for maintaining prosperity. Prolonged periods of prosperity seem to weaken this ethic. So the cycle continues. We know what happens from here.
Life is messy.
Protecting the bottom 99% is the business of the 1%. No soup for you!
Benny's job from day one was to make whole the joo white shoe boys that own all the worthless commercial real estate in America. How much is a mall really worth when you have amazon, ebay or Craigslist? Don't get me wrong, malls are great for flash mobs and thug nigga looting rampages but that's really about it no ? I mean really quit bullshitting who the fuck shops at a mall these days ? Fuck I havn't been to a mall in a solid 5 years or more. If you want to see what a wonderful job BB is doing for his "inner club" just take a look at SPG on a weekly chart basis. I suspect all his "bros" are out by now and next comes the visual of Beirut with bombed out broken down shells of buildings in various stages of collapse now that it's mission accomplished.
The poor author of this article does not realize that the need is not to repeal laws, but to repeal government.
Then, who will enforce the laws?
You'll have a choice of for-profit arbitration courts. Any contract you look at (eg. apartment lease, labor contract) will specify the arbitration service to be used if there's a dispute. If you don't like it, don't sign. Successful services will burnish their reputation to get more business. Simple.
I'll up you on that re; big central government.
Nullification is the only answer. (Even Europe is heading that way)
Too many rely not on themselves, but on protection of central government for their livelihood. Until their benefactor inevitably puts them out of the perimeter to save itself.
In the end, it will be the individual participants in free alternative markets, or in free states, that provide for the vast majority of ex-government dependents, when they can no longer depend on their nanny's ability to steal for them.
There will always be other totalitarian states around to move to, for those enamored with security over insecure liberty.
'Course, I can't remember any long lines trying to get from West to East back in the Iron Curtain days. I mean, everything was free over there, no?
Things weren't 'free' in East Germany or in any of the Soviet block countries in Eastern European. There were still currencies and they were used to purchase a broad array of services and goods. Yeah it was obviously quite different than West Germany but you have no idea apparently what you are talking about. Trying reading a little history.
http://youtu.be/_qG5Q58ecgc
You want to know how the government takes away jobs? The Senate once again fucked the American people up the ass today by drafting legislation to provide paths to citizenship for 11 million illegal aliens. When you fire an American meat packer making $16/hour and replace him with an illegal alien for $8/hr, everybody gets their chicken cheaper right? No. wrong. Corporate profits go up. That's all. That's all this bill benefits. Big motherfucking corporate cigar smoking asshole executives with their eye on a new 3-engine Fountain boat. That and politicians who now get a huge block of ethnic voters in their back pocket. American people, in particular the middle class, get a red hot poker up their ass, again.
As Jim Kunstler pointed out in his blog, Clusterfuck Nation, there are many rational reasons for stopping ALL immigration, including the H1B Visa program, not the least of which is that we have a legion of college graduates with masters and doctoral degress who can't find jobs in their chosen field. Too many Harvard MBAs driving taxi cabs as it is. We don't need more from Puna.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/us/politics/bipartisan-group-of-senators-agrees-on-outline-of-immigration-bill.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
You want to know how the government takes away jobs? The Senate once again fucked the American people up the ass today by drafting legislation to provide paths to citizenship for 11 million illegal aliens. When you fire an American meat packer making $16/hour and replace him with an illegal alien for $8/hr
I 100% agree with your sentiment, but your anger here is misdirected in some ways. The Senate in this instance is following the market instead of protecting workers.
Businesses go abroad because they like 'labour flexibility' - they're just demanding the same thing at home here. A social-darwinist free market has no logical reason to protect the $16/hr meat packer.
Sorry James, but we're just going to have to disagree on this one. For one thing I don't like the quoted term 'labour flexibility'. I mean that just sounds like political aparatchik bullshit to me which inevitably leads to a never-ending wage spiral to the bottom. But more to your point, I am quite frankly not in favor of so-called "free markets" (I'm in favor of fair markets) any more than I am in favor of NAFTA, GATT, or the WTO. I think these treaties on tariffs and trade are the economic eqivalent of scorched earth policy and have left large parts of the country in smoking ruins.
For one thing I don't like the quoted term 'labour flexibility'. I mean that just sounds like political aparatchik bullshit to me which inevitably leads to a never-ending wage spiral to the bottom.
That's why I quoted it.
IMF in particular loves 'labour flexibility' and write about it constantly here's a whole recent paper they devoted to it:
Labor Market Flexibility and Unemployment: New Empirical Evidence of Static and Dynamic Effects
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp1264.pdf
I think these treaties on tariffs and trade are the economic eqivalent of scorched earth policy and have left large parts of the country in smoking ruins.
That's basic neo-liberalism at work and it's functioning as expected.
Neoliberalism is a political philosophy whose advocates support economic liberalization, free trade and open markets, privatization, deregulation, and decreasing the size of the public sector while increasing the role of the private sector in modern society.
I missed the subtleties. Because, what I just said was/is the exact opposite of neoliberalism. Clinton signing NAFTA into law in 1993. That's classic, textbook neoliberalism.
What the senate did is clearly inline with neo-liberalism as practiced....just like NAFTA, WTO etc.
"(I'm in favor of fair markets)"
So, who decides what's fair? Obama? Bush? GE? Exxon? The Pentagon? EBT swipers? Subsidized farmers? La Raza? Fox News?
No free markets or fair markets are possible under the authority of too powerful government, directly controlled by special interest. PERIOD!
How about that which puts American workers at a disadvantage? I mean Jesus Christ, it's not like this is rocket science. If you are making $16 an hour and the next day your choice is either accept $8/hr or get canned, it's not too fucking difficult to figure out what your fucking choices are now IS THERE?!?
Why do you want to pretend ignorance on this issue? It's pretty goddamn obvious who benefits and who loses.
Here is a fun video I probably learned about here on ZH, but I'm sure many haven't seen it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU
Gotta love that H1-b visa program.
Beyond disgusting. The depths of depravity of corporate America has no bottom.
These "people" are motherfucking pigs. We should take them out to the desert, dig a giant hole...I'm gonna stop here before I get put on a DHS watchlist (if I'm not already).
You are, we all are. Was it not prophesied
Suck my cock or be fired. Yes, the boss is gay and he's talking to you Mr. I-didn't-get-over-Rand-after-freshman-year-in-college-guy. Free market bitchez.
Oh yeah, the gay thing. I know all about it. It's very "hip" to be gay in Hollywood and San Francisco these days. It's actually good for your career to pretend you ARE gay even if you're not. All the major power brokers are gay, and the quickest way in either of these two towns to move up the company ladder is to feign being gay. Even straight guys with families pretend to be gay just to get a promotion. They might even suck a dick or two to get that corner office. Don't tell me it's not fucking true. I've seen it. And it is fucking true.
Weird OT comment...what was the GBLT lobby doing in front of the Senate today protesting in solidarity with the illegal aliens and La Raza? Phew. Politics in America is becoming so surreal that I can't even keep up. Would someone like to explain that weird alliance to me?
Would someone like to explain that weird alliance to me?
More dicks to suck?
Should have seen that coming (no pun intended).
I guess my question is, "Why would anyone want to work?"
The disabled, the young, minorities, the untrained—all are weak economic actors---------WTF Minorities are weak economic actors? Thats BOGUS
It's also might be bogus that blacks make up about 40% of US prison inmates but are only 14% of the general population. But whatever the reason, it doesn't make potential employers eager to sign 'em up. Block is right. By and large minorities are indeed weak economic actors. Made weaker by the government who makes it illegal for them to work unless they can compete for and win relatively high-paying job offers. They are thus hobbled from getting the experience that would overturn employer stereotyping.
all life rests in eternity under the headstone
of ideology and the guiding principles, living on,
weep for the translation and careless reduction,
then laugh.
.
fortune cookie ...
" you are the only remaining flower in a dying forest."
.
speaking of jobs, when you have to paint a very large
surface area, the larger the brush the faster the work.
.
I actually travelled to san francisco to meet the guy
who writes those fortune cookie "fortunes" and to give him some
good ideas for future cookie sayings. you go into the place
and ask for the guy who comes up with the sayings and then
they give you a blank slip and you write your thing on there
and then go away and hope to one day open a fortune cookie
and read your own message. yea, that is the way it works.
.
next door is this guy who plays an electric box with a few
strings on it. he plays right there on the sidewalk, the
instrument amplified through an am/fm radio, somehow
he was featured in a movie but I couldn't tell you the name of it,
or his name or the name of the thing he plays. it is like an electric
cigar box violin? when it is cooking it sounds like a cat
spitting and choking on the eating of a big bird with bone fragments
from the meal lodged in its pallet?
.
anyway, I forget the rest of the story .....
.
oh, all markets are free and free to be manipulated, all governments
are sovereigns and are the culmination of manipulation to that degree.
Excellent Article. Thanks!
Walter Block: building a bridge to the 19th century.
More like Fantasyland but what he is describing as never remotely existed including 19th century America which is likely what he would refer to.
Yeah, the 19th century sucked: no Fed, no income tax, biggest accumulation of wealth in the history of the world.
And no Obama phones!
child labor, no worker safety, company coal and mining towns where you were overcharged for everything, 6 day work week with no benefits - get hurt and you're unemployed, die and your family starves, urban poverty akin to today's third world, filthy air and streets...... yeah, great place if you were a robber baron. Sucked big time for most others.
that 'biggest accumulation in wealth' went to a VERY FEW people and came from the labor of thousands working at sustenance levels. There's a reason you had things like the Colorado Labor Wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Labor_Wars Molly Maguires http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Maguires and all
Keep in mind that you also had the wealthy employing Pinkertons using machine guns against laborers who dared complain about conditions and even getting the local state militia called out against strikers.....
yeah, great place if you were a robber baron. Sucked big time for most others
That explains why nobody immigrated to this hell-hole of a country in the 19th century. /sarc
I get it that working life for most was not exactly the Playboy mansion, but everything is relative. Charles Dickens tries to horrify us about poor children working in London but doesn't show us what death and starvation was like in the country in those days. Families move voluntarily to search for a better life. Better. Not perfect.
And if strikers are occupying my property and won't leave, damn right I'm bringing out my blunderbuss. You do believe in the right to defend private property, don't you?
I always laugh at these kind of posts. Usually from the same idiots who profess that Ayn Rand was a key influence on their lives. The reality is the author holds up the 'free market' as some kind of magic almost benevolent force which will cure all of society's economic ills ignoring the basic moral limitations of people & companies (we will cheat, lie,and steal on a large-scale especially if it is people we have no social ties to), it completely ignores actual history, and doesn't begin to address many of the multiple limitations of a free-market economy.
The basic fact is too is that there hasn't ever been anything remotely similiar to a 'free-market economy' as what the author is advcoting either including 19th century America which didn't have nearly the labor laws it does today but had all kinds of tariffs, import quotas, and had a lon of state/local licensure and other requirements.
He does qualify his remarks by stating the free markets will not affect utopia.
Just deregulate everything and life will be better!
we will cheat, lie,and steal on a large-scale especially if it is people we have no social ties to
True. But how do you do that and convince customers not to patronize your competitors? Profit and loss. Genius.
As a PhD in Economics (Health Economics), I can't believe a university (Loyola University New Orleans) would waste an endowed chair professorship on somebody like this who is nothing but an idealogue and borderline crank. Seriously who puts on their curriculum vitae 'privatize everything' right at the top? I can only imagine what kind of idiocy he teaches in his environmental economics class.
Since you have a doctorate and all, care to compose one or two sentences explaining the "idiocy" of privatizing everything? Thanks.
Oh Jesus Christ, just saw a report of Justin Timberlake singing for the "First Family"
We are so done, so cooked, so finished, so fucking over the Rubicon and done, cooked.
Now, come on, it ain't all that bad.
Wait until they get a third Bush in office, either Jeb or George P. (Jeb's son) back into the White House.
Then it'll be time to wail. Let Reconquista commence.
We don't have a 'free market' - we have corporate cronyism where large companies use government for their advantsage. Corporations use government to set policies that favor THEM and increase profits at the expense of all other factors - what benefits the nation as a whiole, what benefits society as a whole. We currently have corporations using government to keep the price of labor LOW in an uneven playing field. You cannot and should not allow cheap foreign labor with no safety rules and no pollution controls in place to compete with domestic labor yet 'free trade' does just that. When the means of production cannot be moved overseas companies push for cheaper labor here via H1B visas and illegal immigrants.
You do NOT have a 'free market' when companies use government regulations (that they have written) to limit competition. Boston Beer spent millions fightnign a bogus suit over labeling that was brought to benefit their larger competitors like Ambev.
Look at how Monsanto monopolizes seed production and misuses the law to go after farmers. Meanwhile agribusiness gets government subsidies NOT to grow crops.
FDR DID create jobs BUT he got real returns and valeu in return. Buildings were built - roads, parks dams and far mroe were constructed with government money putting unemployed to work. BUT that money went to LABORERS, not corporations. Those working spent their money and purchased goods made by other Americans.
TODAY we print money without end and GIVE it to - not WORKERS in exchange for work that produces value - but to CORPORATIONS (specifically the finance industry) who then use that free money to collect inrterest in expanded 'reserves' or speculate with that government money on stocks and commodities (driving up prices for others). This is a perverse DISINCENTIVE. Banks needing to expand their reserves do not pay higher interest to draw in savings from laborers but instead get no cost money from government.
With all the money therown at banks, you COULD have re-wrieetn every mortgage in the US at 5% over extended terms to let damned near EVERYONE stay in owner occupied homes avoiding the worst of the housing melt-down but NOOOOOOOOOO... instead we have banks (and the Fed) sitting on worthless mortgage backed securities and thousands of empty houses (while thousands of peopel are homeless collecting government benefits).
The financiers have destroyed viable profitable comanies - along with the jobs they provided - by loading them with debt and milking them dry. You have had huge increases in productivity over the past 40 years but the 'savings' have not gone to lower prices or higher wages for workers but to huge bonuses for a very few executives who were rewarded for destroying the long term viability of the companies they ran. The number of US based brands of note and valeu that have been destroyed over the past 40 years by execs who looted pension funds and cut to the bone is enormous. Remember 'Chainsaw Al' Dunlap? We won't even mention the massive FRAUD in companies like ENRON.
When your economy is based on financial fraud and gimmicks - and starving the laborers that actually MAKE things - your economy is doomed.
"BUT that money went to LABORERS, not corporations."
Not so fast. While you make valid points, you may rest assured that those monies which went to new deal projects were filtered through corporations (many of which were known as companies) prior to seeing the inside of any laborers .
When genuflecting at the altar of FDR, one should also consider the damage he did.
Just pointing out that FDR DID put people to work - instead of paying them NOT to work (the current approach of BOTH parties). And while the companies building Boulder Dam et al profited handsomely, he WPA and CCC employed people who otherwise would have been jobless - and likely homeless as well.
Almost a quarter of those using the local homeless shelter are 'employed' - but in jobs paying so poorly that they can't afdford a place to live. A cousin down south has had 4 diferent jobs over the past 6 years - he's thrilled that his college degreed son is the assistant manager at some fast food place....the Fortune 500 company he used to work for sold off the plant and the new owners took on half the old staff at a reduction in wages and benefits.I suppose you can say they're lucky the plant wasn't shipped overseas lock stock and barrel
Used to work for the largest employer in the Bronx - ther for over 100 years - 1500 jobs... gone in a game played by a loot the company chairman. Farberware, the second largest with 900 jobs sold the name to a company in Hong Kong and shut down.......
For a free market assessment of FDR, you might like to read "The Forgotten Man". He was no hero. The depression lasted years longer because of him. A lot of suffering and death on his hands. And don't get me started on his love of the Brits and dragging USA into WW2...
Wow, people actually still legitimately believe this tripe? Even now? When history clearly shows that "let the free market do everything" results in abject poverty and destruction of society? People sure are pretty stupid. Then again, so is the notion of trickle down supply-side economics, which the US is firmly still trying to stick to. Government doesn't "destroy" jobs, government jobs allow for services which ensure a more even playing field and providing services which are not linked to "profit" that are required for society to exist. But, that's just me, I guess some people get hard at the idea of human skeletons shitting in rivers. Sorry dipshits, Ayn Rand is a piece of shit who inspires only those who are wilfully ignorant of the world and incapable of actual productive thought.
Government giving tax breaks to large (now)multinational corporations for outsourcing/offshoring millions of jobs.
Wall Street cheers when a large corp. cuts their labor costs by doing the above and drives that corp.'s stock price up to the moon...
What categories does this fall under? 'Free markets?'
Free Willy! No! Free The (Highest Ever) Market(z)!
No mention of NAFTA? We fought a war to abolish slavery and NAFTA legalized it.
Watch Goldsmith's interview with Charlie Rose in '94
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI
The author ignores the fact that new technology is destroying many more job than it is creating. And, no one has an answer for that.
Because of reverse-engineering and now 3-D printing, new technology, without patent or trade secret protection, has an ever decreasing economic life span. Each wave of advancement accelerates job destruction. We are in the era of mega-corporations, who own and deploy the means of production with fewer and fewer human operators.
There are really only two choices for the ambitious: Work for the corporates or work for yourself in a niche business.
It is an interesting conundrum when technology can do all the productive labor and there is none left for people? The economy has to switch to knowledge based as long as there is enough energy to fullfill the production. There is no shortage of it regardless of what anyone says, it is just a question of harvesting it. A shitty education system that is used to control and indoctrinate instead of actually teaching how to think and to acquire and apply knowledge is the biggest roadblock to this transformation. We've already wasted at least one generation right now in the transition. The old guard that refuses to accept it won't give up it's grip on power easily but they will die soon and the tide will keep moving one way or the other. The get off my lawn types trying to extend and pretend the show just long enough so they can have their retirements payed for before the shithouse collapses are some of the biggest obstacles to this.
Utter nonsensical article. Who writes this crap?
Wow, I can see how you've thoroughly refuted Dr. Block's assertions there. Well done!
The moistureboys that critcize are long on insults but short on brains and rebuttals....Off to the slave labor camps in North Korea with all of you.
Guest Post: How The Market Creates Jobs And How The Government Destroys Them
The author created here a list of the "usual suspects" in how most of us perceive the issues that impact the quality and quantity of jobs available. He does not however address the impact that Trade agreements and Immigration have on jobs and Labor.Those are the two largest impact areas on jobs that government CAN and DOES impact in very big way.
- Trade Agreements - Other than a few industries that are self protecting "through technology," millions of US jobs have been lost since the late 1970's to Japan, China, BRICS, NAFTA, etc. Consider this; When the cost of energy makes it cheaper for a product to be made outside of the US and transported to a retailer near you - Where has the cost reduction come from? The answer is primarily from LABOR. Why? Has this not been by design by both political parties?
- Unrestricted Legal/Immigration - Both at the high and low end skill sets American workers have been decimated in the same time period. Why? The convenient meme is that Americans no longer process the technical skills that we need. AS A GENERAL STATEMENT THIS IS NOT TRUE. Factually, the three areas that impact this are, 1. Almost no labor competion. At the low skill areas there are many more people than jobs, 2. Government Welfare Programs that make it better for people to stay unemployed than to accept low paying positions, 3. The concept of "just in time hiring or just in time skills" that American business has come to expect, making labor almost a disposable commodity.
- Just in Time Labor and Labor as a Commodity. - With the exception of a few industries, American business does not see their workforce as a competitive advantage on a long term basis. Check out most advertised open positions. They require specific technical skills, at specific locations, at approximate pay to their competitors, under employment at will conditions, with almost no training and no guarantee of reasonably continued future employment. Additionally if you are an unemployed professional, you have to overcome the stigma of having been unemployed. Most Corporations want currently employed labor and other than increased pay, offer little else in inducement for currently employed individuals to change jobs.
These issues are systemic and structural. Both Government and Labor (Non public Unions,) have abrogated their responsibilities to economic principles of labor compition. What we now have is a situation where every laborer, (low skill or high skill,) is on his own, merely a world wide commodity based on the perceived need for his or her skill set. American business does not value labor as a long term technical asset, but rather as any other commodity to be bought or rented in the world wide marketplace. It is this kind of thinking that has killed the partnership between Education and Business for skill based technical training from the High School/Technical School/College levels and a reasonable job expectation at the end of that training, with American business.
Government and unions getting in the way of comparative advantage.
He says: "The supply of labor is limited. We must not allow government to create jobs or we lose the goods and services which otherwise would have come into being. We must reserve precious labor for the important tasks still left undone."
Is this guy a libertarian nut case? His are the stupidest comments I've seen in a long while. We do not have a shortage of labor. Millions cannot find any work and millions more can only find part-time jobs. The private sector is not creating enough jobs and, because of cutbacks, tens of thousands of state and federal workers are out of a job but most economists say we are in dire need of government stimulus. And how the hell do you "reserve" labor?
I don't know how much more stupidity I can take....
So there is an endless supply of labor? Show me your math.
What is missing in the author‘s adulation of the “free market”?
Missing is the fact that the “free market” doesn’t always penalize actions which do harm to others, and in fact may reward actions which do great harm to others.
Missing is the fact that the “free market” doesn’t exist apart from the government protecting the alleged “free-market rights of property owners”.
Missing is the fact that the publicly employed teacher or garbage collector can be as productive as privately employed ones.
Missing is the fact that undemocratic, secretive, self-serving private institutions and those who head them can be just as awful as
undemocratic, secretive, self-serving public institutions and those who head them.
Doubtless the important question is not whether public or private.
Harm is subjective....Your rights to property and liberty are not..."Free Market Rights"??? WTF is that??? Is someone harmed by smoking pot or hiring a prostitute or owning a house for that matter?
Publicly employed teachers and garbage collecters don't have to compete in the real world (free market) so you end up with over priced, mediocre service at best.
Why would a private institution be democratic. Maybe we should all vote on how you should be allowed to decorate your living room....
Doubtless there is no question that your education was public not private.
Missing from your comments: the discipline of profit and loss is completely absent from non-private entities.
I'm surprised to see an increasing number of anti-libertarians or otherwise statists interventions in here. Apparently, libertarianism and the economic "right" in general are now the "mainstream" and being against or critical of it makes you "the downtrodden" critical thinker.