...about the proposed minimum wage hike, and the way rightbloggers reacted to the CBO report on it. They could have kept their mouths shut about this very popular plan, in short, but the bait was too good. They think the possibility of half a million jobs lost is a good talking point against the raise, but they don't understand that they're the last people on earth anyone would trust on the matter; hell, they could be reading straight from the Holy Bible and no one would believe them -- which, come to think of it, is how they got in this predicament in the first place.
I keep hearing that some of the more adventuresome conservatives might go for a guaranteed income, but I'm old and remember when they were saying that about slavery reparations.
Missing a pronoun at the end of yo first sentence in the Voice article, suh.
ReplyDeleteRoy, you're missing an "it" at the end of your first sentence in the Voice article.
ReplyDelete"If government sets or raises the minimum, employers have an incentive
ReplyDeleteto use fewer low-skilled workers... The minimum wage, therefore, harms
the people most in need," said Sheldon Richman at Reason"
This is why paying employees nothing is actually helping them the most. They'll probably be so happy, they'll start to sing little songs as they work!
Right, because if you run out of skilled workers, you might have to invest money in training them and then you might see your labor force as a valuable asset instead of a drain on stockholder profits and then where does the madness stop?
ReplyDelete"The government has no business telling private employers what to pay or telling workers they cannot offer their labor services at less than the legal minimum wage,"
ReplyDeleteAnd it has no business telling private employers not to employ children, or to adhere to fire codes. It has no business telling private employers not to force employees to work 72 hours a week without overtime pay. Et Cetera.
Jesus Christ, it's as if the last 100 years never happened.
Oops, I thought this comment got eated by Discus. Please delete.
ReplyDeleteAppreciate it -- typo fixed.
ReplyDeleteJim Geraghty: Stupid or Evil? I've worked more than my share of minimum wage jobs, so I guess he would have to be a stupid, out of touch, evil dickbag to assert that an extra $300 or $400 a month wouldn't increase my "spending power." When the rent's $1000 a month, you have three kids and you're making $7 an hour, you would definitely more than appreciate an "extra $85 to $114" per fucking week, Jim.
ReplyDeleteshorter rightbloggers: swing low, sweet chariot
ReplyDeleteI tried to read it, Roy. Hand to G-d. But I just broke down. Even you can't make these miserable people funny anymore.
ReplyDeleteI have literally seen a conservative politician suggest child labor laws should be abolished. So yeah.
ReplyDeleteNext stop: Bring back indentured servitude!
Gotta love how the free-marketeers who are all so opposed to "income redistribution" have no problem with redistributing income from all of us to the benefit of businesses who value stockholder profits more than their employees' ability to feed themselves.
ReplyDelete...the $4 minimum should come with "expanded earned-income tax credit, or with more straightforward wage subsidies" -- which would give the slave-laborer a few extra portions of meat per week without costing businesses a dime.
Why should I be subsidizing Wal Mart - a highly profitable company I have freely chosen to NOT do business with, in large part due to the low wages and other shitty practices towards employees - by having a portion of my taxes go to provide assistance for the employees they refuse to fairly compensate? Wal Mart makes billions of dollars per year, and yet they need to reach into MY pocket to prop up shareholder profits? While I don't want their workers going hungry and as such I don't want to see food stamps, etc. cut, I'm already subsidizing the fucking richest family in America, all so they can be off the hook for paying people a fair wage. And in return, I don't even get those super low prices they always gas on about, because I refuse to give the evil motherfuckers more than they are already hoovering out of my pockets against my wishes in order to prop up their fucking failed business model. EITC is just more of the same.
Fuck that noise. Let's try a new model - one that stipulates that if you can't pay a wage high enough to support the worker doing the job, then you go out of business because you have an untenable business model or are unable to attract customers when you have to pass along the true costs of running the business. Everything else amounts to that "income redistribution" that conservatives keep their panties in knots about. You fuckers wank around about "free markets" all the time, so fine. Let's have one - one which doesn't allow the Waltons to subsidize their greed with my tax dollars.
What I don't understand is the willful insistence that raising the minimum wage is good only for minimum wage workers. Those people spend most of their income, which has stimulative effects on the economy that helps lift everyone's boats.
ReplyDeleteTheir other argument is that the average low-level office worker will be mad because they won't be earning more than minimum wage, even though they bring more education and skills to their jobs. What conservatives don't mention is that raising the minimum wage will likely make those office workers realize they're being underpaid too, which may lead to even more people agitating for higher wages.
When discussing economic policy with the supply-side set, I've often wondered what these businesses are that would hire superfluous employees if only they were cheaper. Do these guys not understand how commerce works?
ReplyDeleteExactly. Do they honestly think businesses are currently in the practice of hiring employees just because the minimum wage is low?
ReplyDeleteConsistently, in almost every industry, we're seeing companies operate with the fewer number of workers possible. They cannot possibly cut much more without their businesses seriously suffering.
I love those cartoons. Apparently, the only thing keeping a Big Mac from costing the same as a surf and turf platter is the shitty wages of the rank-and-file employees. Makes sense, if you don't think about it (and you're a bit of a dick). It's one of those things that proves that economic cons, for all their bloviating, don't really get the ins and outs of business. If they did, they'd realize that the reason the food at places like McDonald's is so cheap is because much of their menu is made up of products that are subsidized by the government to keep prices artificially low. That's the thing - the Gubmit already manipulates the economy, and if it stopped there would be quite a few CEOs in this country who'd be in trouble.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I love it when this crowd fails to understand why the business community isn't marching in lockstep with them. None of them ever seen to consider that, for example, many business count the government as their biggest client - and not just obvious ones, either. If the entanglements between business and government interests aren't blindingly obvious, they don't even notice. Yeah, this is the crowd we want deciding the direction of our economy.
Their businesses are suffering...er...I mean their underpaid overworked terrified employees are suffering
ReplyDeleteIt's essential to the conservative economic worldview to believe that money given as wages to low-income earners, or as taxes to the government, simply disappears.
ReplyDeleteYou keep expecting them to suddenly break into a big shit-eating grin and say something like, "Really had you going, didn't I?"
ReplyDeleteBut they never do.
Or that, like most sane people over the age of 15, they might realize that, no matter how many times they say the same shit over and over again, the world just isn't going to come around to their way of thinking.
ReplyDeleteBut they never do.
If they think that promoting "job creation" without promoting "making a living" is a winning strategy, all I have to say is "please proceed, Republicans".
ReplyDeleteIt's one of those things that proves that economic cons, for all their
ReplyDeletebloviating, don't really get the ins and outs of business. If they did,
they'd realize that the reason the food at places like McDonald's is so
cheap is because much of their menu is made up of products that are
subsidized by the government to keep prices artificially low. That's the
thing - the Gubmit already manipulates the economy, and if it stopped
there would be quite a few CEOs in this country who'd be in trouble.
On an even more basic level, each employee is slinging a fuckton of food-like product. It's not like a five dollar increase in the hourly wage will have a corresponding five dollar price increase per burger.
At Bloomberg, Michael R. Strain of the American Enterprise Institute was willing to compromise, offering paupers a minimum wage of four dollars.
ReplyDeleteO_O
At Bloomberg, Michael R. Strain of the American Enterprise Institute was willing to compromise, offering paupers a minimum wage of four dollars.
O_o
"... CBO proposed only
ReplyDelete900,000 citizens rising above the poverty level..."
Hmm, ONLY 900,000 citizens? That's odd, because I distinctly remember that 900,000 people losing their shitbag health insurance after Obama PROMISED them they could keep it was a TRAGEDY!
It's the same playbook they use to convince poor white people that they are better than black people, therefore the social safety net should be eliminated so "those people" can't get over.
ReplyDelete"This is why paying employees nothing is actually helping them the most.
ReplyDeleteThey'll probably be so happy, they'll start to sing little songs as they
work!"
If Frank Luntz had been alive in South Carolina in 1850, he'd have retitled these employees of the cotton farming industry as "Interns", and avoided the P.R. problem that was becoming increasingly thorny...
I make $8.60 an hour, part time. I cleared just over $6k last year. Thankfully my wife has a nice white collar-type job, or we would be eating cans of $.33 Store Mexican Plankton.
ReplyDeleteMaybe an extra $30 bucks a week IS small potatoes, but it's $30 that will most likely be plowed right back into the local economy when I buy movie tickets or books or hula-hoops or Moon Pies. That they fail to see that fact, over and over, is baffling.
I wonder if he thinks "retarded" workers should get $2/hour...
ReplyDelete"You're getting your foot in the door, Toby! We're paying you in experience! Otherwise, where would incentive to move up the ladder come from? I'm keeping you from that moral hazard!"
ReplyDeleteAt the very least bring back paying employees in company scrip redeemable only at the company store.
ReplyDeleteI am honestly shocked Walmart hasn't tried that one.
But what about the employees that WANT to work 72 hour weeks? The government is infringing on their right to contract themselves out as a serf!
ReplyDeleteThey did, until the Mexican Supreme Court stopped them in 2008.
ReplyDeleteRemember how the Mittster said he'd "bet Rick Perry $10,000" on something or other, and didn't seem to get that for a whole ton of people that's half their yearly income or more? This is like the inverse of that: I'm sure Geraghty et al. don't live like Croesus, but I doubt they ever go to bed hungry or live in fear of missing rent. So to their ears it amounts to "You're trouble your masters for a mere extra $100 per week? I spend that much on shampoo in a week!"
ReplyDeleteI believe this comic applies:
ReplyDeletehttp://thepunditpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Daily-Kos-Comic.png
How did I just know that someone was going to tell me something like that?
ReplyDeleteA pro-big business propagandist named Richman. I just what.
ReplyDeleteAnd consider that money given to rich people is the least likely to actually return to the economy. Either it sits in a hedge fund gathering interest (and dust), or it goes overseas. If you're trying to use consumer spending to jolt the economy into shape, tax cuts for the already-unspeakably rich is perhaps the single worst way to do it.
ReplyDeleteI think Rick Santorum talked about his grandpa being paid in scrip back in the day as if it was a profound gesture of goodwill on the company's part, instead of the economic equivalent of locking people up and swallowing the key.
ReplyDeleteOh, Tom Tomorrow. No one else can make me laugh and want to punch things so much at the same time.
ReplyDeleteConservative ideas about the economy seem to presume that most people who work work as household servants. Butlers, footmen, scullery maids, etc., are employed only by the benevolence of the local lord of the manor, who -- if he is to remain your (Job) Creator -- really mustn't be hindered, angered, or, really, looked at in a way other than adoration.
ReplyDeletePlus, small potatoes cook up real nice.
ReplyDeleteMmmhhmm some french fried potaters
ReplyDeleteOn an even more basic level than that, do they think that a waiter at Applebee's makes more than twice a cashier at McDonald's, just because a burger costs twice as much there?
ReplyDeleteThese people act like ANY wages are given out of the sheer goodness of the CEO's heart.
ReplyDeleteYou know what's the best part? Loudly arguing against increasing the minimum wage (or in favor of lowering it, or eliminating it altogether) is quite possibly the single dumbest economic issue to pick a fight on. According to this Gallup poll from 2013 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/160913/back-raising-minimum-wage.aspx) 71% of Americans (which is lower than it was ten years ago, but still) support a minimum federal wage of $9 (which is still really crappy, but STILL), including 50% of Republicans and 54% of the conservatives. In 2008 (and I know a lot has changed since then, but STILL), a bunch of minimum wage increases passed in various states, including Missouri with 75% of the vote. So basically half of McCain's voters crossed over and supported a minimum wage increase.
ReplyDeleteSome political issues are frustrating and impossible to deal with. Gun control for instance. On this one, any sane liberal would look at Republicans spoiling for a fight on it and say 'bring it on, motherfuckers.'
Great for Forbes, who were able to reduce their research staff when the Forbes 400 list became the Forbes 1 list.
ReplyDeleteThose people spend most of their income, which has stimulative effects on the economy that helps lift everyone's boats.
ReplyDeleteBut those boats just get in the way, and Tom Perkins' yacht has to run them over.
What's annoying about this debate is that conservatives say that we can't raise the minimum wage because of all the unforeseen consequences. But we have. Or at least some states have. Minimum wage ranges from $2.13 for jobs with tips in a number of states (which is just monstrous) to $9.32 in Washington state. Even if one insists on ignoring the fact that you could pretty much draw two overlapping lines between "states ranked by GDP per capita" and "states ranked by minimum wage level", conservatives say that raising the minimum even a little bit would a catastrophe. Jobs being shed by the thousands, prices shooting sky high, and so on. Well, I don't remember reading anything about desperate low wage workers from Washington jumping the border to Idaho to find a fast food joint who's hands aren't completely tied by Washington's crippling $9.32/hour wage. Nor have I heard tales of Washingtonians leaving the state just so they can find a Big Mac that doesn't cost ten bucks. We're at a point where the least insane conservatives still fudge with "well, we don't know how this would affect the economy", but we do know. The results are in. This economy can absolutely support a higher minimum wage. I don't know why it's even up for debate economically speaking.
ReplyDelete... or even looked in the face by the likes of us!
ReplyDeleteYou magnificient bastard.
ReplyDeleteIf we are to continue consuming as a way to keep things bobbing along, it may be the only thang to save us.
ReplyDeleteThat, and Eisenhower-era tax rates.
... cans of $.33 Store Mexican Plankton.
ReplyDeleteWhere can I find that?
Just follow the whales.
ReplyDeleteI want to work for this comment. Does it have a vacancy for a back scrubber?
ReplyDeleteIt's using your own boot to stamp yourself in the face for ever and ever.
ReplyDeleteMost of them ARE working 72-hour weeks. At two or more shitty jobs. As for the "want"... probably not the right word...
ReplyDeleteThe One Rich Guy looks creepily like Dr. Phil.
ReplyDeleteDiscus prefers to preserve your embarrassment for posterity.
ReplyDeleteOn the can, the serving suggestions photo shows sparrow on a curtain rod, roast over a burning tire.
ReplyDeleteSo you've rad my book?
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/AJXKVOxqkWM
WINNERS AND LOSERS whirrclick WINNERS AND LOSERS whirrclick WINNERS AND LOSERS
ReplyDeletepublic support for the $10.10 minimum wage -- measured by Pew in January at about 73%
ReplyDelete100% - 73%, carry the 2....dang, the answer is always 27% on the wrongass side of every even slightly mathematical question. Shirley there's a reason for this?
The workers making minimum wage may very well appreciate the extra $85
ReplyDeleteto $114 per week," admitted Geraghty, "but it's not going to have much
of an impact on their purchasing power."
This is marvelously stupid. To the people making this kind of money (more than I make, here on the Central Government Ponzi Scheme), this represents $5200 a year that will absofuckin'lutely be spent. Every dime of it, because, to the people in this bracket, "savings" is just a word in the Walmart ads. Paycheck-to-paycheck, one layoff away from a refrigerator box and a shopping cart, this kind of loot probably more than doubles their discretionary spending. Or maybe moves 'em out of a rathole apt into something with a tad less rat in it...
And are we all agreed that there's a meaning to that cartoon that Mr Varvel probably doesn't get, even though he wrote it?
ReplyDeleteI'm retired, but I could greet for this comment...
ReplyDelete"Welcome to Alicublog. I Love You."
ReplyDelete"The government has no business..."
ReplyDeleteI don'wannayoucan'tmakemeyaddayaddayadda...
If these fuckwits don't want a government, let 'em have a Pacific island all their own. There's a phrase nibbling at the corner of my mind, whatwhatwhat...ah, yes...
"America, Love it or Leave it"
"That they fail to see that fact, over and over, is baffling."
ReplyDeleteIt IS baffling, unless you consider the possibility that, while they think they're talking about economic and political matters, they're really just moralizing. To them, "business" is bound by "market forces" in a strict and manly way, whereas "government" acts via coercion in service of sentimental liberal feelings.
It's profoundly stupid, mean-spirited, narrow, and, like most moralizing, rooted in hypocrisy. But it's what they need to feel, the poor dears. Ask them if one Walton should be allowed to net six billion dollars a year merely from getting out of bed, while a million others (thanks to the same system) go hungry, and they literally wouldn't understand why such a question has any validity. And then pronounce themselves "Christians."
In glorious harmonies. Because suffering (something something) the spirit.
ReplyDeleteYou're lucky you can afford sparrow on a curtain rod. We have to settle for starling on a stick.
ReplyDeleteReason's David Harsanyi oh-yeahed, "How many of those findings are driven by partisan and ideological concerns rather than empirical outcomes? I'll let the social scientists argue over it."
ReplyDeleteYes, and I'm sure that Harsanyi's own judgment is unclouded by partisan or... You know what? I can't even finish this and I'm sure I don't have to.
Do they honestly think businesses are currently in the practice of hiring more employees than they need...
ReplyDeleteOn the management side, American businesses historically have done just that. Out in the shop, or on the counter, not so much. I had a boss put it very succinctly one time, talking to the salesmen up front, about me, the repair guy out back that he didn't know could hear:
You guys make me money, (he) costs me. He's overhead. To their credit, the manager and salesman he was talking to *did* know I could hear, and were quick to point out what I already knew. My ability to fix that cheapass furniture was the force behind the store's (idiotic, I always thought) lifetime guarantee, which sold a lot of cheapass furniture, and made the boss a lot of money. I worked there several years, and actually grew to like the old guy, but those people just live in a different world...
Even more annoying is that 40% of those shareholder profits accrue to just six people who now collectively have more wealth (~$100 billion) than the bottom 140 million people in this country. This is not so much subsidizing several million shareholders as it is the subsidizing of one family that could live lavishly, opulently, deliriously, flatulently (go ahead, name your favorite adjectival adverb) on just one-tenth of one percent of what they've accumulated--without working.
ReplyDeleteI remember when this stuff used to funny. Now it's policy.
ReplyDeleteSlavery... is an ugly word...
You really can't make up this shit anymore. Even the Gooper candidate for Illinois governor suggested cutting the minimum wage. It's like any day now you half expect Megan McArdle to write a book on failure, without any irony at all.
There are millions of people who like Big Macs, at least enough to have a few per month. Not many are interested in paying $15 for it. The large crowd buying the reasonably priced burgers and the prospect of a much smaller set buying them after a steep price hike means that the price will stay around where it is now. The cons have suddenly forgotten how supply-and-demand works.
ReplyDeleteVery few of them knew how it works in the first place.
ReplyDeleteIt's similar to the argument that government jobs are not reallyjobs.
ReplyDeleteBut....but.... but then the profits will go down! And then the shareholders will go Galt! And then we'll all be very, very sorry because .... well, honestly, I don't know why. But they assure me that we will.
ReplyDeleteAs for the "want"
ReplyDeleteOh, they have plenty of that...
Look in the Pelagic aisle.
ReplyDeleteI guess he assumes that everyone is like him, and if they got eight Ulysses Grants extra they'd just wipe their ass with it. Which is his right, but most of us can think of other things to do with the money.
ReplyDeleteThat they fail to see that fact, over and over, is baffling.
ReplyDeleteThey're failing to see it because they don't want to see it. In the Church of the Free Market, not becoming rich is the only real sin they recognize, and if you're not raking it in, you are a bad and nasty person, and bad things should happen to you. Who gives a fuck about the economy? There are fucking sinners that need punishing!
Seriously, anytime one of these dipwads gets up on a soapbox and starts blathering, imagine the speech coming from a greasy televangelist. They might use the same words that Professor Krugman uses, but what they mean by them is hellfire and damnation.
Look, it's a given that these people are, first and foremost, morons. That means they not only cannot do math, they don't think they need to. In most capital-intensive businesses, labor costs amount to perhaps 20-22% of operating costs (maybe occasionally as high as 25%). If, as in the fast food business, the overwhelming number of workers are at or near minimum wage, a $2.85 increase raises labor costs about 40%. That's a roughly 8% increase in operating costs. If a Happy Meal is, what, $2, the actual increase required to stay even is sixteen cents.
ReplyDeleteThey don't like math because it rarely supports their ideological framework (slavery is good!). None of these morons ever consider that paying McDonalds' CEO twenty times what he's worth alone adds about four cents to that Happy Meal, and that's for one person, not a million.
Um-m-m..."don't call you Surely?"
ReplyDeleteMexican Plankton is too spicy for me, but those little hats they wear are adorable.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't want the last hundred years to happen, so they're working hard at undoing them.
ReplyDeleteHere's the really interesting part of the matter. At the time of the Gilded Age, by today's definitions, the United States was a third-world country, with over fifty percent of its population engaged in subsistence farming, and with most of those farmers suffering huge losses to the robber barons that controlled the railroads (said robber barons having realized that if one controlled the means of distribution in any market, one controlled the market and market pricing). The same was true in the industrial labor market--getting eleven hours a day, six days a week, for a fixed daily wage (which was typical in manufacturing 120 years ago) meant that there was a lot of money in labor costs that could be skimmed off directly as profit, profit that was then not taxed. That's what paid for the many mansions built in Newport as "summer cottages" for the obscenely wealthy.
As workers gained some rights, the very wealthy realized that they were losing a little ground in the march to hoover up every bit of wealth in the country, so they started paying people like Eddie Bernays to convince the public that democracy and capitalism weren't just compatible, they were one and the same thing. I distinctly remember growing up in the `50s with that incessant mantra--that "our standard of living" was the best in the world because of capitalism (always defined as GDP per capita, which neatly papered over the horrors of extreme poverty, and wealth concentration in the top .01% of the population and in corporations).
The real truth, as Michael Parenti has said often, was that our standard of living was in very large part due to worker-initiated efforts toward unionization, a minimum wage, Social Security, the forty-hour work week and the institution of paid overtime, the end of child labor and the demands that government take on enforcement of these things, and that capitalists fought bitter battles against these initiatives, and are still doing so.
The upshot of all this is that if conservatives were to get what they most want today, we'd be a third-world country again.
"Savings" is just another word for "nothing left to spend," to paraphrase Kristofferson.
ReplyDeleteCalvinism and imperialism go so well together, don't they?
ReplyDeleteOne would think that recognizing that an economy that is 70% dependent upon consumption would, generally, suggest stimuli to increase consumption as a means of reviving a moribund consumption economy, at least to the extent that capital availability isn't deformed. There's no shortage of capital today (the Fed has seen to that, in spades), so the wankers on the right should be ecstatic about anything that keeps their capitalists rolling in dough.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yet, they aren't. It's one of the things that make them morons.
loooxury...
ReplyDeleteI can't even laugh at it any more. I was involved on the losing end of a local minimum wage campaign a few years back; logic failed us (and proportion fell sloppy dead). The most memorable moment of the campaign was when I did one of the ritual debates with a local small business guy and he made his pitch and sat down next to me, leaned over while I was being introduced, and whispered, "Pete, you ignorant slut." Bastard gave me the giggles.
ReplyDeleteWasn't there a Republican that ran for office a few years ago named Rich Whiteman?
ReplyDeleteYeah, and per the CBO report, the raise might benefit 10.5% of workers, not 1.1 as Geraghy cites. I lean towards stupid, although the two categories aren't mutually exclusive.
ReplyDeleteProbably. I have seen ballots that list name, then party, reading Rich White (,) Republican.
ReplyDeleteIt's like a name a kid would make up for the mean rich guy in a story, like from Axe Cop or something. Sheldon, for God's sake. Does he share a corner office with Wellington J. Snootsworth?
I thought that's who they ran against Obama in 2012.
ReplyDeleteFar be it for me to solve all the inherent, intrinsic contradictions of capitalism, but, c'mon, this stupid fucking argument is as old as capitalism itself, and it has been proven wrong over and over again. If one has consciously moved to an economy dependent upon imports, consumption and financialization from one dependent on value-added manufacturing and export (which this country's leaders definitely have done over the course of five decades, and accelerated that process from the beginning of Reagan's first term in office), then virtually anything that encourages consumption is beneficial (that's not to say that an economy largely based on consumption is an ideal to be protected--far from it--it's just acknowledging the current reality).
ReplyDeleteSo, why this continuing obsession with so-called "trickle-down" economics after decades of proof that it doesn't and can't work (and make no mistake--this hue and cry over the minimum wage is a facet of that obsession)? Some of it, surely, is that it was embraced by America's Most Intellectually-Challenged President, Ronald Reagan. One can't discount hero-worship in a segment of the whining right. The remainder, however, cling ferociously to the concept because, I think, their well-being is dependent upon largesse from the obscenely wealthy in exchange for propagandizing the public on behalf of the obscenely wealthy. And it is the obscenely wealthy who see taxation as a crime, who perceive every apportionment of income as a zero-sum game, who believe the hoary old "efficiency" myths of privatization, and who really do believe that the instruments of their wealth, their workers, are, paradoxically, lead weights on their accumulation of wealth (an enormously, horrendously stupid belief in a consumption-driven economy).
Thomas Paine said (and it's not one of his most well-known sayings) that, "a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it the superficial appearance of being right." And I think that's where we are with trickle-down economics and all its corollary principles, one of which of course is that all surplus must be handed over to those at the top of the economic engine, even though study after study after study has shown that surplus used in that way produces the smallest multiplicative effects in the economy as a whole, and that the benefits for average people virtually disappear if that money is used for overseas investment and for job growth outside one's borders--or, if it is used as leverage to skim off wealth in the real economy, the results are universally negative (as the 2008 crash resoundingly proved).
That these tendencies and attitudes are most common in the nouveau riche of our time should have been expected--the same happened with the robber barons of the Gilded Age and the same happened with the oil barons who came to sudden wealth in the Texas/Oklahoma oil boom of the `30s (the H.L. Hunts, the Clint Murchisons and the Fred Kochs). Unlike those in the past, however, the current crop of robber barons have a philosophy of greed on which to justify their attitudes, Objectivism. They finally have that philosophy of which John Kenneth Galbraith said they were in constant pursuit, and they are using a tiny percentage of their accumulated wealth to promote their own interests to the public at large in a package that has the benefit of superficially sounding right (hey, it's a science! Economics!), trumpeted by a hired good squad of propagandists who themselves have for decades adamantly refused to think that thing wrong.
And is "Harsanyi" Hungarian for "Jonah Goldberg"? I'll let the linguists argue over it.
ReplyDelete"As I keep saying, permanently high disemployment is an elite policy choice, and both legacy parties are fully on board."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/02/links-22314.html
~
bonus: how do you think the Chinese got all those billions they use to buy US Treasurys? Free trade baby!
ReplyDeleteI guess that's because conservatives don't listen to real economists, either.
ReplyDeleteI always thought it was hilarious that Santorum always talks about his grandfather, nobly scraping coal out of the ground with his fingernails, but never mentions his parents. That's probably because they were both Veterans Administration employees, ie gummint workers, ie moochers and takers.
ReplyDeleteToo much Downton Abbey-style "nostalgia" and not enough wondering what happened to the world nearly one hundred years later to make such living untenable.
ReplyDeleteHow many of those findings are driven by partisan and ideological concerns rather than empirical outcomes?
ReplyDeleteHow many? All the ones you don't agree with.
Their whole argument is that America's economy should be set up to make rich people richer. To me the only question is the size of the weapon (RPG? AK-47?) needed to poke holes in that argument.
ReplyDeleteLove this clip. (I'm not at all sure Stuart Best [R-AZ] actually resigned his seat 20 years ago. . .)
ReplyDelete"That they fail to see that fact, over and over, is baffling."
ReplyDeleteWhat's also baffling is that more Dem pols aren't pointing out these facts loudly and repeatedly. Christ, if they're too lazy to write their own talking points, they could just come over here and read the comments.
Inconthievable!
ReplyDelete"...obscenely wealthy... who perceive every apportionment of income as a zero-sum game..."
ReplyDeleteWell, the apportionment of income IS a zero sum game since, at any given point in time, there's only so much money in an economy, and if the Job Creators deign to pay workers more than a subsistence wage, there'll be less for them. When I started out in my profession, I faced the same situation that a lot of small business people do... I occasionally had to not take a paycheck in order to pay the staff, and I did that because good staff are hard to find and worth keeping when you do find them. The problem starts when Captains of Industry start regarding workers as draft animals which are interchangeable and who either don't posses feelings at all, or whose feelings can be ignored because they never interact personally with them.
I make the distinction of it not being a zero-sum game because of the effects of productivity. When productivity soared, there should have been much more wealth to distribute to everyone, workers and owners alike. But, particularly in the last thirty years, wages have been virtually stagnant, and in practical terms, most all of the productivity gains have gone to the 1%. Adding in the effects of productivity makes the situation even worse--when wages were made stagnant (no doubt at the urging of the Wall Street banks and free-market hacks), the productivity gains that should have gone to workers went to owners, who then exhorted their workers to live the good life (as the owners were doing) and loaned some of that money back to workers at usorious rates of interest, which only compounded the dilemma for workers created by the owners.
ReplyDeleteThe question I have always asked is "Who are they trying to fool more, us or themselves?"
ReplyDeleteI used to think it was a cynical put on, and that behind all the bluster and moralizing they knew that they were hypocritical shits, but that since the gig was a good paying one, they kept it up.
Since the reports about the Romney 2012 campaign came out saying that they actually BELIEVED their own bullshit "unskewed polls" and that they genuinely expected to crush the Kenyan Usurper, I've been forced to recognize that many of them do, in fact, believe the nonsense they spew.
I don't know what I find scarier, hypocrites lying through their teeth in a pursuit of money and power or genuine True Believers who understand in their hearts that 2+2=5.
Why the hell do they rate a pacific island? That's good real estate. Unless you are talking about a place with less than 6 feet of elevation that will be awash when the global climate change they insist isn't happening sinks it just like every other nice bit of low lying sea coast, and even then, those moochers ought to pay top dollar for the privilege of drowning first.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's part of their argument. The rest of it is that democratic government should be set up to serve only rich people.
ReplyDeleteIt's my analogy of the poker game. The game can only continue until one guy has all the chips. At that point, he can loan some of his chips to the other players to keep the game going (such as what happened in mortgage lending) but when he wins all of those chips back again, it's game over - and no more games until some of the players have been able to pay off their debts. That's where we are now, and without some kind of official acknowledgement that the problem in the economy is one of low demand because too many people have no discretionary income thanks to slave wages, that's where we will remain.
ReplyDeleteSomewhere, a manager is now wondering if he can get away with having the interns whipped.
ReplyDeleteNo one reading a novel would believe a guy named Lloyd Blankfein was heavily involved in destroying the world economy through insane financial practices.
ReplyDeleteFalse dichotomy there, horsey person. Given that the Republican Party's platform these days is pretty much Evil Stupidity for Everybody!
ReplyDeleteTrue believers are scarier. I at least understand hypocrisy.
ReplyDeleteIn addition McDonalds' or whatever other employer may not alway be able to pass the increase on to the customer, but has to pay it's employees a larger share of the profits. Thats certainly a feature of minimum wage laws and an overall beneficial one.
ReplyDeleteWe have evidence of the converse as well. Walmart stated that the reason why they had lower profits last quarter was because the decline in SNAP funding resulted in less spending at their stores.
ReplyDeleteRighteous certainty has amazing insulating qualities.
ReplyDeleteThat one took a particularly ugly turn in the last couple years to where they now consider government jobs to be the same thing as welfare.
ReplyDeleteD'you recall C.S. Lewis' famous quote about who would be the worst person to be tortured by? A thief will give up once he has all your money. A sadist loses interest when you give up; if you're not fighting back there's nothing to dominate. A priest, on the other hand, will never stop, because he's doing it for your own good.
ReplyDeleteGrifters follow money. True believers draw sketches for standing-room-only ovens....or the fiscal equivalent.
Well, sure, but officially they're only working 39 hours so they don't get insurance.
ReplyDeleteSheldon, for God's sake.
ReplyDeleteOh, now now. Sheldon Whitehouse is usually a mensch. And I would love it if he ran for president someday, just for the obvious jokes.
I have literally seen a conservative politician suggest child labor laws should be abolished.
ReplyDeleteHell, Janice Rogers Brown belives that, and that deranged sociopathic fuckwit has a seat on the D.C. Circuit for the rest of her putrid assboil of a life ... unless a Republican president appoints her to the Supreme Court. </powderdry>
The upshot of all this is that if conservatives were to get what they most want today, we'd be a third-world country again.
ReplyDelete"If"?
(go ahead, name your favorite adjectival adverb)
ReplyDelete[PANICKED] Uh, uh ... contumaciously!
It's essential to the conservative economic worldview to believe that
ReplyDeletemoney given as wages to low-income earners, or as taxes to the
government, simply disappears.
One entertaining bit in Colleen McCullough's The First Man in Rome is when Marius is proposing to pay the bottom-of-the-heap capite censi to be soldiers during a shortage of the "right kind" of manpower. McCullough has Scaurus the patrician decry the plan as being a drain on the treasury. When Marius retorts that perhaps giving a bunch of poor people money to spend might redound to the benefit of the marketplace, Scaurus is adamant that the poorest will just "fritter away" the money, thereby magically vaporizing it.
Now, I doubt that such modern ideas about government stimulus actually entered into the debate. But it's fun to think that it's an argument that was false when made by a hidebound moneybags reactionary in 100 B.C., let alone false today. And by "fun," I mean in the sense of "driving one to shrill unholy madness."
I wonder if he thinks "retarded" workers should get $2/hour...
ReplyDeleteThat whole Daily Show bit with Schiff vs. Ritholtz needs to be edited down into a campaign commercial. I'm torn over whether Samantha Bee's spit-take should stay in or not.
Loudly arguing against increasing the minimum wage (or in favor of
ReplyDeletelowering it, or eliminating it altogether) is quite possibly the single
dumbest economic issue to pick a fight on.
During a presidential election? Sure. In 2014? They're not going to suffer for it one goddamned bit.
Even the Gooper candidate for Illinois governor suggested cutting the minimum wage.
ReplyDeleteComing back to my reply to Spaghetti Lee elsewhere in this thread, how much is that actually going to hurt him at the polls? I mean, Pat Quinn raised taxes (*gasp*), and is currently slightly less popular than dogshit, which is surely kicking itself for not forming an exploratory committee.
LOL And I never type that unless I really am...
ReplyDelete