Re: OT: Iran nukes are Clinton's fault

Read "The World is Flat, A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century" by
Thomas Friedman

Go ahead and jump in at "America and the Flat World"
Here's a nice quote, "The Indians and Chinese are not racing us to the
bottom. They are racing us to the top--and that is a good thing."
Friedman is not exactly your 'neocon'. NYT Pulitzer Prize winner.
"Captain Liberty N. Justice" <Liberty_N_Justice_4@xxxxxx> wrote in message
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"BR Eagle" <goc313@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
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"Kurt Ullman" <kurtullman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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In article <bQd1g.2518$pi6.1464@dukeread12>,
"BR Eagle" <goc313@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<salmoneous@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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What will it take to convince you raising the minimum wage is bad
for LOW
SKILLED workers?

Some actual evidence instead of simplistic arguements out of Econ
101. We've had increases in the minimum wage. People trotted out
this same old argument that it would be bad for low-skilled
workers. They were dead wrong. The low-skilled were much better
off after the wage increase than before.

That is like arguing that you don't believe in the law of gravity.
Damn science!

NOt at all. There are a number of well-known (and even a Nobel
Laureate or two) on both sides of the issue. The issue is one of the
ones where the old adage "if you laid all of the economists in the
world end-to-end you still wouldn't reach a conclusion."
For one example the Boston Fed recently weighed in on the subject of
an increase in MA minimum wage:
The Boston Fed's analysis concludes that the $1.50 an hour increase
over two years would lead to the loss of anywhere from 2,100 to
10,500 jobs -- one to four percent of low wage workers and just a
fraction of a percent of total employment -- while increasing net
earnings of low-wage workers by $255 million. It also suggests
opponents' claims that a minimum wage increase alone would hurt
economic competitiveness may be overstated, noting that a variety of
other factors, from taxes to education levels, must be considered.

http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/neppc/researchreports/2006/rr0601.pdf
I recommend this to anyone interested. A balanced look at it in the
context of MA, but also mentioning other things.

Then there is quote from The Economic Policy Institute that sums up
the REAL problem.
"That argument, however, rests on the simplistic observation that
some of the states with high minimum wages also have high
unemployment rates. Without more examination, this observation is as
useful in understanding state job markets as noting that joblessness
has been on the rise in New York since the last time the Yankees won
the World Series. It might be true, but it doesn't mean one is
causing the other."
This guy goes on to look at Alaska and a couple of other states
with
higher minimum wages. He says there is no change in unemployment
rates following the increase. Yet he does have a rather interesting
chart that clearly shows a spike of about 90 days right after
implementaion where job growth rate goes down but the RATE goes back
up. It would be nice to see how long it took actual jobs to rebound
to where they were (although it looks like probably by the end of the
year of initiation.
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/briefingpapers_bp150

There are others that show no impacts whatsoever, which are
suspect on the face. Most of these studies (and those for and against
the living wage) are largely assumption filled and fact free.
The bottom line is that the outcomes will be real sensitive to the
baseline used. Nationally there is likely to be little difference.
Hwever, at lower levels there will be different impacts based on both
the relative percentage of jobs currently under the proposed increase
and the relative size of the job classifications that tend to employ
minimum wage workers. Thus, the impact of it in MA, where 90% of the
jobs are already above even their higher proposed wage, is going to
much different than in other states (probably largely Southern
states) where the percentage of the workforce at the current minimum
is higher.

It may well be that minimum is below equilibrium. If raising the
minimum wage worked, why not raise it to $20/hr?
It is hard to see jobs that never get created...kind of like tarrifs,
easy to see what we protect, but difficult to see the ones lost (never
created) because of higher prices we pay for goods and services.




"Point of equilibrium". I LOVE that term. Functionalism.

Okay. Point of equilibrium relative to what?

Game, set, and match.

Welcome to the post modern nightmare of the social sciences, which
includes Economics.

As I said in the piece you probably didn't read, if we follow the
"invisible hand" where labor costs are concerned, the best system
(assuring best POE, using functionlist, positivist theory) is slavery or
near slavery. It was the source of the US's great economic gains in the
1800s. It is making China and India prosperous... well, the top 1%
anyway.

Of course, it doesn't come close to providing the same growth in GDP as
Keynesian methods.

When you're China and India and you play Monopoly with an inexhaustible
source of capitol from slave or near-slave labor, and nobody is willing
to check your labor exploitation with tariffs, and you bar entry to your
own markets by businesses in other countries, the invisible hand of the
market must take over based on how China and India are dictating the
terms.

The Hand dictates that other countries must normalize wages and prices in
line with those of China and India. They won't raise wages in China and
India. They don't have to. So to compete, we must lower our wages to
their levels to achieve the Point of Equity.

Does that sound like a good idea to anybody else?

The way the game is being played today, that will be inevitible. If
China and India really practiced free market economics, then it wouldn't
be so bad. Our wages would go down, but theirs would come up to
establish the POE. But they practice protectionist fascism, and do it in
a damned clever way... the same way Japan does. The business group. If
you are a business in China and need a supply of widgets, you buy them
from another Chinese company. Not from an international. And this trade
practice (more tradition than national policy) bars entry to their
markets by the rest of the world. This serves to keep their wages
artifically low. And it forces other countries to lower their own, to
compete in the markets into which China and India export.

Damned clever.

And our conservative economists say we don't dare impose tariffs in
response because that would be counter to our "free market" tradition.

Guffaw.

Economist Lester Thurow wrote an interesting book about this back in the
late 90s. "Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe,
and America."

He was wrong about the Japan part. I could see it was going to be a
battle with China, back when I read it in 1998. But the mechanism is
still the same. They buy up our natural resources, convert the resources
to finished goods with their near slave labor, and then sell it back to
us. Every go-around in that transaction cycle depletes our capital.

And the kicker: The depleter uses our "free market" tradition against us,
sucking up all of our wealth and making us into a third world economic
power with the bomb. Making us DEPENDENT ON THEM for our own living...
just like we did Africa, South/Central America, and the Middle East in
the late 1800s through 1990s.

Except now those regions are fighting back... in some cases with oil and
bullets.

I can't wait to see the competition between China and the US for oil. I
think we already are, with the War in Iraq and coming war with Iran.

--
Yours truly,
Captain Liberty N. Justice

Dedicated to using humor, progressive values, and the light of facts to
drive a stake into the vampire's heart of the regressive agenda!





.

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