US Politics : Biden 100 days edition

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AlmightyBender

AlmightyBender

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rietrot said:
You are presenting this as a strawman.

Capitalist believe in fair value and the market and every single person decides what is the fair value of a product or service or their time/labour for themselves when they willingly enter into a contract.

You are then imposing stupid socialist talking points on capitalism. Nobody cares if it is $10 or $15. It is the principle of the matter, arbitrary government price controls are bad.

Capitalist also recognized the consequences of these arbitrary government price controls and why it is bad. It disregards what the actual fair value is.

What is the fair value of someone flipping burgers. That depends on thousands of things. If a Burger place tries to hire someone for $10 and nobody shows up to fill the job then that isn't the fair value as their are no willing person to take that job.
If there is a willing person then it is fair. As the burger place and the employ both agree that that amount of time and that amount of money is worth that much. Fair value. Nobody is forced into it by the other party.

By the government setting the price too high you are either pricing the most vulnerable people you pretend to care about out of a job, or if the price is to low you remove the bargaining power from those people as all the burger places can now just charge a flat rate across the board and say sorry, the government says your time is only worth $10.
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The flaw in your argument is that you are equating the concept of "willing person" with "desperate person" and those are NOT the same things.

I would be completely in favour of this model if and only if the safety net of unemployment benefits was high. This is the exact situation the US is in right now. Before the benefits were raised people were desperate. Right now they aren't so they can willingly turn down kak wages without the consequence of dying, which is exactly what is happening.

You're painting the picture the people who aren't happy with low wages would rather die out of starvation for the principle of it. This is delusional and not based in reality in any way.
 
Unhappy438

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konfab said:
Firstly, there are numerous problems with the minimum wage.
1) Living costs dramatically vary from place to place.
2) The supply of labour can vary from place to place.
3) The availability of work can vary from place to place.

It is absolute hubris to think you can distil all these complexities and regional differences into one number, which you call the living wage.

Secondly.
It really is about understanding how the concept of the price of something is determined. Contrary to what your buddy Marx says, prices are not determined by how much work you put into providing a good or a service. They are determined by what someone else is willing to pay for said good or service and what someone is willing to sell said good or service for. If prices are not determined like this, you get severe economic problems. Like unemployment, inflation caused by the lack of production.

The only proven way of helping those on the lower end of the economic scale is to have a free economy that produces high economic growth. That growth then allows workers to be more picky about which jobs they can pick as the burden then shifts to employers to look for lower cost labour.
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You're just trying to place hurdles in places that dont exist in an excuse to do nothing. Starting with a minimum wage that represents a living wage in the cheapest of areas is at least a start.

I understand the concept of supply and demand, the places with more demand and less supply should be paying above minimum wage.

P.S - Using words like "your buddy Marx" doesn't exactly inspire a healthy debate, ask your buddy Hitler about that.
 
konfab

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Unhappy438 said:
You're just trying to place hurdles in places that dont exist in an excuse to do nothing. Starting with a minimum wage that represents a living wage in the cheapest of areas is at least a start.

I understand the concept of supply and demand, the places with more demand and less supply should be paying above minimum wage.

P.S - Using words like "your buddy Marx" doesn't exactly inspire a healthy debate, ask your buddy Hitler about that.
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And how do you determine supply and demand? You cannot do it correctly because you have already destroyed the thing that indicates the relation of supply and demand. Which is price. The price of labour in this instance.

And as for the excuse of "doing nothing", hitting your head against the wall is doing something, yet I don't even think progressives would think it is a productive thing to do. In most cases with economics, doing nothing is exactly the thing that should be done, simply because leaving people to figure out a balance is often the best way.

A charming analogy is the concept of desire paths.
68573mfe8jsy.jpg

These are the paths that people make themselves, because the paths that the designers make are not on the paths where people want to go on.

Minimum wage and other stupid types of regulation are the equivalent of forcing people to walk on the paths that the central planners want them to walk on. Yet you can see that there are plenty of cases where people find a better path.

download (19).jpg
 
Unhappy438

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konfab said:
And how do you determine supply and demand? You cannot do it correctly because you have already destroyed the thing that indicates the relation of supply and demand. Which is price. The price of labour in this instance.

And as for the excuse of "doing nothing", hitting your head against the wall is doing something, yet I don't even think progressives would think it is a productive thing to do. In most cases with economics, doing nothing is exactly the thing that should be done, simply because leaving people to figure out a balance is often the best way.

A charming analogy is the concept of desire paths.


These are the paths that people make themselves, because the paths that the designers make are not on the paths where people want to go on.

Minimum wage and other stupid types of regulation are the equivalent of forcing people to walk on the paths that the central planners want them to walk on. Yet you can see that there are plenty of cases where people find a better path.
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The market can quite easily determine supply and demand beyond a minimum wage. The idea that any regulation in a market destroys its ability is complete bunk.

Using your path analogy, minimum wage wants to pave that pathway that's essentially a muddy rut just like the other pathways and you're going "noooo thats going to mess with peoples ability to choose pathways".

I feel the only common ground we can find is that you can certainly go too far on a minimum wage just like any kind of regulation. The US isnt at that point yet though.
 
konfab

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Unhappy438 said:
The market can quite easily determine supply and demand beyond a minimum wage. The idea that any regulation in a market destroys its ability is complete bunk.

Using your path analogy, minimum wage wants to pave that pathway that's essentially a muddy rut just like the other pathways and you're going "noooo thats going to mess with peoples ability to choose pathways".

I feel the only common ground we can find is that you can certainly go too far on a minimum wage just like any kind of regulation. The US isnt at that point yet though.
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You get regulations that make the market work, like:
A regulation that requires people to tell the truth when negotiating with each other is fine.
A regulation that holds people to their word is fine (basically contract law).

Regulations that try to dictate the results of a market process, like minimum wage are going to fail because of the reasons that Hayek gave in his seminal essay: the Use of Knowledge in Society:

https://german.yale.edu/sites/default/files/hayek_-_the_use_of_knowledge_in_society.pdf

In short, the knowledge that you need to make an economic decision rationally does not lie in a central point, it is distributed among a whole group of people.
 
DA-LION-619

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konfab said:
And how do you determine supply and demand? You cannot do it correctly because you have already destroyed the thing that indicates the relation of supply and demand. Which is price. The price of labour in this instance.

And as for the excuse of "doing nothing", hitting your head against the wall is doing something, yet I don't even think progressives would think it is a productive thing to do. In most cases with economics, doing nothing is exactly the thing that should be done, simply because leaving people to figure out a balance is often the best way.
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Going back to your healthcare comparison, that would mean the cost of public health destroys private healthcare.

How do you see the government? Is it another competitor or just a body setting rules?
 
Temujin

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surface said:
I am hoping you will be able to explain all this to a "non-african" like me?
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You can go ask it yourself, maybe it'll tell you
In the coming weeks, reports Artnet News, visitors will be able to activate a QR code near the sculpture and literally ask the “oracle” figure a question. They may then receive an answer from one of several unnamed celebrities, who will take turns answering queries with “mysterious, poetic vagaries,” Biggers adds.
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greg0205

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buka001 said:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1392820199338950658

Impossible, I was told the "benifits" incentivised people to stay at home.
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