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Post by Amadan on Nov 21, 2018 8:53:34 GMT -5
Once again, words in my mouth. "Claiming that people who support minimum-wage laws are also in favor of central planners deciding when you can turn on your heat in the winter" are not my words. What I said was "Minimum-wage laws are price fixing, but the support for them is ridiculously high," which you strawmanned into your version, then accused me of being dishonest for the statement. If you're going to condemn me for my words, please use my words to do so. Thanks. Who's being dishonest here? You. Your original statement was that 99.9% of the left and over 50% of the right thinks "profits are evil" and that price-fixing is fine. When I pushed back on that, you gave support for minimum wages as an example. People who support minimum wage laws (by and large) do not think "profits are evil" or that price-fixing is good. (Yes, I understand you are claiming that minimum wages are an example of labor price-fixing, but even if you are correct in an abstract sense, you know that "price fixing" of the kind you initially described is not that.) Likewise, I said your conspiracy theory is that shadowy government interests deliberately propped up the USSR as an enemy when it was never a serious threat. That is very different than saying that a lot of academics were stupidly credulous and that the Pentagon has always been happy to exaggerate any threat that will pump up its budget. You just can't deal with gray, can you?
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Post by Don on Dec 7, 2018 19:32:52 GMT -5
What I said was "Minimum-wage laws are price fixing, but the support for them is ridiculously high."
Both clauses are correct.
I continually hear the argument that setting a minimum price on a good won't negatively impact the quantity demanded, but only in the special case where unskilled labor is the good being sold.
Every other item, from apples to zebras, the higher the price, the fewer are sold. But not unskilled labor.
That's pure uneconomic, unscientific horseshit, as several studies have pointed out.
A minimum wage prices low-skilled minorities out of the labor market. Look at the employment rate for young black or hispanic males over the last couple of decades.
But wait, there's more! Rising minimum wages have all but eliminated the summer job for high schoolers, where, once upon a time, they learned the basic business etiquette that many mourn the absence of today. That's a nifty unintended consequence, right there.
What I said was "As for the USSR's economy, believe it or not there were people who knew it was a paper tiger, dependent on US grain shipments to keep its population in check. We were feeding that paper tiger to keep the Cold War going as long as possible. As soon as it collapsed, the War on Terror conveniently re-employed the military-industrial complex."
How did you get "your conspiracy theory is that shadowy government interests deliberately propped up the USSR as an enemy when it was never a serious threat" from that? As rob pointed out, those grain shipments were public knowledge, as was the shaky state of the USSR's economy. It was "estimated" to be massively larger, but the shortages and lines to obtain goods were common knowledge as well. It didn't take a rocket scientist to see through the paper tiger, just a willingness to look.
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Post by Amadan on Dec 7, 2018 21:13:25 GMT -5
Actually, I believe most people who support a minimum wage acknowledge that it has a negative effect on the labor market, they just believe the trade-off is worth it, and overall beneficial to workers. They may or may not be correct, and they certainly disagree with you as to how much of a negative effect it has, but don't mischaracterize them as all being magical thinkers. They do not disagree with you on the basic mechanisms of price-fixing, they disagree on the impact.
(I'm talking about actual economists, or people who have some understanding of economics, here. Yes, there are Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez supporters who think you can just magically raise wages and make everyone more prosperous.)
As for shadowy government conspiracies, you seem to be advocating the idea that at the highest levels of government, it was known all along that the USSR was never a credible threat and it was all a scam to pump money into the DoD. Regardless of how much of a paper tiger their economy was, the USSR had nukes, so they were always a credible threat. A better understanding of them might have meant dealing with them more efficiently, but just as the War on Drugs and the War on Terror may frequently be clusterfucks, it doesn't mean drugs and terrorism aren't problems that we should do something about. Yet you seem to think all threats are just manufactured hallucinations by a government looking for a reason to exist
I don't remember anyone, back in the day, saying "Just ignore the Soviets, their economy is going to collapse any day now." Because even if (when) their economy did collapse, it was going to present a threat. (And it did, and our fuckups are part of the reason why it went from, briefly, a democracy ready to join the modern world to Putin's shitshow.)
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Post by Don on Dec 8, 2018 5:07:20 GMT -5
Here. The second Seattle bump cost the average low-income worker $125 a week. That's quite a cut for something that was supposed to help low-income workers. How many studies do you need? A few dozen more are available. The truth is out there, and it trumps belief every time. YMMV.
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Post by Amadan on Dec 8, 2018 9:22:31 GMT -5
Here. The second Seattle bump cost the average low-income worker $125 a week. That's quite a cut for something that was supposed to help low-income workers. How many studies do you need? A few dozen more are available. The truth is out there, and it trumps belief every time. YMMV.
How does that contradict what I just said?
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