T
TenBobNote
Guest
I guess I have never considered the popularity of anything to be an issue. My goal is to find and pursue truth, not popularity.
- Status
S
stinkcat_14
Guest
If you had a cure for cancer, you would probably want physicians to know about it, and if they ignored it you wouldn’t be doing any good for society if you just kept to yourself and said popularity is not important. If you can disprove Keynes, why wouldn’t you want to publish it in the JPE or the AER? Isn’t that where it could do the most good?
C
CPA2
Guest
The minimum wage is a socialist program from the Socialist Party of 1928. It has been a failure since day one. It also violates common sense. The economy is too complex for central planning from Washington to work.
The economy is in a mess because of Washington and the economy may never recover because of socialist interference in Washington. Government is just a parasite. It cannot produce any wealth.
Government can only divide up the economic pie and keep a lot for itself. Government can never make the pie grow larger; it can only make the economic pie smaller!
About 70% of economists surveyed agree that the minimum wage is responsible for an increase in unemployment among the young and unskilled laborers IF that wage is above the equilibrium wage. The minimum wage would have no effect on unemployment if the minimum wage were below the equilibrium wage.
As an employer I experienced a surplus of unskilled workers seeking jobs when Clinton and Congress rapidly increased the minimum wage above the equilibrium level.
Government is only capable of producing surpluses of young and unskilled workers through a price floor such as the minimum wage. Additionally, government is only able to produce shortages through price ceilings. Government is a parasite. I am not aware of government producing much good. In the gospel, God told the people of Israel through Samuel something to that effect when they asked for a king.
I have a difficult time getting a handle on the concept of ethics. I have an even more difficult time trying to understand how to enforce the concept of ethics. I read the book, Ethics in the Post-Enron Age for an accounting class. The book states, “Instructors are aware of students’ difficulties in coping with the ethical problems that arise in complex transactions. Facing uncertainty in applying accounting principles to clarify economic transactions and provide relevant information for decision making, the accountant experiences pressures that challenge his or her judgment and make it difficult to act with integrity and for the public good.”
I do not think that we can successfully legislate ethics. I do not believe that rules-based ethics leads to ethical behavior. Excessively detailed rules constitute a guideline to fraud, for example. Rules also provide a ready-made set of defenses. Unethical people can claim that they followed the rules, even while they intended to mislead.
Language is imprecise. Therefore, many laws are an effort to limit and restrict more than one variable. Extremely long sentences are the end-result! Tax Court judges also have to read the incomprehensible. Research shows that the Tax Court could not discern the intent of Congress in one-third of the cases reaching them.
We studied natural law, positive law, etc. However, Hamilton and one of the first Supreme Court justices said that there are only two types of law, man-made law and divine law. When man-made law violates divine law, then the made-made law is invalid. For example, Roe versus Wade violates a fundamental, unchanging moral principle, the right to life. Roe versus Wade is invalid. It is not worth the paper it is written on. Is Roe versus Wade an ethical decision? Man’s laws change with the seasons. God’s laws never change. If we cannot judge ethics by some immutable standards, why bother studying ethics? I do not believe in salvation by law, but I do believe in principles based behavior.
The economy is in a mess because of Washington and the economy may never recover because of socialist interference in Washington. Government is just a parasite. It cannot produce any wealth.
Government can only divide up the economic pie and keep a lot for itself. Government can never make the pie grow larger; it can only make the economic pie smaller!
About 70% of economists surveyed agree that the minimum wage is responsible for an increase in unemployment among the young and unskilled laborers IF that wage is above the equilibrium wage. The minimum wage would have no effect on unemployment if the minimum wage were below the equilibrium wage.
As an employer I experienced a surplus of unskilled workers seeking jobs when Clinton and Congress rapidly increased the minimum wage above the equilibrium level.
Government is only capable of producing surpluses of young and unskilled workers through a price floor such as the minimum wage. Additionally, government is only able to produce shortages through price ceilings. Government is a parasite. I am not aware of government producing much good. In the gospel, God told the people of Israel through Samuel something to that effect when they asked for a king.
I have a difficult time getting a handle on the concept of ethics. I have an even more difficult time trying to understand how to enforce the concept of ethics. I read the book, Ethics in the Post-Enron Age for an accounting class. The book states, “Instructors are aware of students’ difficulties in coping with the ethical problems that arise in complex transactions. Facing uncertainty in applying accounting principles to clarify economic transactions and provide relevant information for decision making, the accountant experiences pressures that challenge his or her judgment and make it difficult to act with integrity and for the public good.”
I do not think that we can successfully legislate ethics. I do not believe that rules-based ethics leads to ethical behavior. Excessively detailed rules constitute a guideline to fraud, for example. Rules also provide a ready-made set of defenses. Unethical people can claim that they followed the rules, even while they intended to mislead.
Language is imprecise. Therefore, many laws are an effort to limit and restrict more than one variable. Extremely long sentences are the end-result! Tax Court judges also have to read the incomprehensible. Research shows that the Tax Court could not discern the intent of Congress in one-third of the cases reaching them.
We studied natural law, positive law, etc. However, Hamilton and one of the first Supreme Court justices said that there are only two types of law, man-made law and divine law. When man-made law violates divine law, then the made-made law is invalid. For example, Roe versus Wade violates a fundamental, unchanging moral principle, the right to life. Roe versus Wade is invalid. It is not worth the paper it is written on. Is Roe versus Wade an ethical decision? Man’s laws change with the seasons. God’s laws never change. If we cannot judge ethics by some immutable standards, why bother studying ethics? I do not believe in salvation by law, but I do believe in principles based behavior.
C
CPA2
Guest
Ludwig von Mises taught F.A.von Hayek. However, the pupil was brighter than the teacher. Hayek won the Nobel Peace Prize. Much of Hayek’s work was on prices and the transmission of information. (If I ever get out of school I will read some of Hayek’s books.) When Keynes came on the scene, Hayek faded into the background. The Austrian School of Economics started around 1870 –1890. The school disbanded when Hitler marched into Austria.
These are some of my favorite quotes from Ludwig von Mises. He is known as the head of the “Austrian school” of economics. He was a Professor of Economics at the University of Vienna from 1934 to 1940
“The notion that it is possible to pursue a credit expansion without making stock prices rise and fixed investment expand is absurd.”
“Credit expansion is the governments’ foremost tool in their struggle against the market economy. In their hands it is the magic wand designed to conjure away the scarcity of capital goods, to lower the rate of interest or to abolish it altogether, to finance lavish government spending, to expropriate capitalists, to contrive everlasting booms, and to make everybody prosperous.”
“Firmly committed to the principles of interventionism, governments try to check the undesired result of their interference by reporting to those measures which are nowadays called full-employment: unemployment doles, arbitration of labor disputes, public works by means of lavish public spending, inflation, and credit expansion. All these remedies are worse than the evil they are designed to remove.”
“It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. The funds that a government spends for whatever purposes are levied by taxation. And taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend. Government is the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.”
“The boom is called good business, prosperity, and upswing. Its unavoidable aftermath, the readjustment of conditions to the real data of the market, is called crisis, slump, bad business, depression”
“The boom squanders through malinvestment scarce factors of production and reduces the stock available through overconsumption; its alleged blessings are paid for by impoverishment.”
“The boom produces impoverishment. But still more disastrous are its moral ravages. It makes people despondent and dispirited. The more optimistic they were under the illusory prosperity of the boom, the greater is their despair and their feeling of frustration. The individual is always ready to ascribe his good luck to his own efficiency and to take it as a well-deserved reward for his talent, application, and probity. But reverses of fortune he always charges to other people, and most of all to the absurdity of social and political institutions. He does not blame the authorities for having fostered the boom. He reviles them for the inevitable collapse. In the opinion of the public, more inflation and more credit expansion are the only remedy against the evils which inflation and credit expansion have brought about.”
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”
“The whole system is the acme of the short-run principle.”
“The credit expansion boom is built on the sands of banknotes and deposits. It must collapse.”
“If one wants to avoid the recurrence of periods of economic depression, one must start by preventing the emergence of artificial booms. One must prevent the governments from embarking upon a policy of cheap interest rates, deficit spending, and borrowing from the commercial banks. This is, of course, a very difficult task. Governments are in this regard very obstinate. They long for the popularity that booming business conditions seldom fail to win for the party in power. The unavoidable crash, they think, will appear only later; then the other party will be in power and will have to account to the voters for the evils which their predecessors have sown.”
C
CPA2
Guest
Minimum wage, Social Security, etc. are monuments to the stupidity and failure of socialism.
S
stinkcat_14
Guest
Here is the question though: If the minimum wage is a blatantly socialist program why is it set so that it affects such a small part of the labor force? Less than 1% of the workforce is affected by the minimum wage. Defense spending has more of a socialist impact on our economy than the minimum wage does.
Some government programs do create wealth. For example, community colleges make people more productive at relatively little cost. Other government programs do facilitate the creation of wealth. For example, the interstate highway system allows more economic activity than we would have without it. Other programs, such as defense spending are clearly an example of the government acting as a parasite.
If this is the case, the Somalia must be a real economic haven. After all, they have pretty much got the government off the back of the Somali people.
I have never disputed this, I am not sure why you feel compelled to bring this up over and over again.
My guess is that you probably live in a poor area where the minimum wage had a larger effect. Overall, if we look at workers between the ages of 16-24 years old who would be most affected by the minimum wage we see that total employment went up from before the minimum wage was increased in 1995 until 1997 after the second increase. So workers in this age group were not harmed on average.
Unions can create surpluses, so can discrimination.
Perhaps we need to be more like Somalia and become an anarchy. That is better than no government at all.
At least you are honest when you say you don’t understand ethics.
I think there are a lot of pro-choice politicians who agree with you.
T
Texas_Roofer
Guest
Just because any one person or group opposes any one theory or assumption base is terribly inadequate to believe all economics is bunk. It is rather ironic that the people who ultimately argue for laissez faire/ caveat emptor ( let it be/buyer beware) refuse to acknowledge that any free world evidence disproves it. That is simply delusional. I have already mentioned twice that in Bangladesh and Mexico one has to question why economic disaster occurred under laissez faire/ caveat emptor conditions. Unfortunately the only statement they make is “the left ……….”. Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan were preachers of laissez faire/ caveat emptor and simultaneously extremely influential in US politics. About a year ago Alan Greenspan was called before congress to explain the collapse in commercial banking and what his answer was: "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," - Mr. Greenspan said. Now, by no means would I dismiss Mr. Greenspan’s body of work however I also refuse the delusion to ignore these repeated incidents of economic failure. I continue to support deregulation of industry as part of the life cycle but never as a complete life cycle process.
One of the primary differences between laissez faire/ caveat emptor approach to wages verses minimum wage theory is assumptions of what makes a free market. In the real world free market assumptions are commonly violated as noted earlier where it is illegal to do surgery without a license regardless of skill level. In minimum wage theories one has to ask “Why do some people accept minimum wage rates?” Many answers exist and some are within free market principles, however many are outside free market principles.
Hope that helps
One of the primary differences between laissez faire/ caveat emptor approach to wages verses minimum wage theory is assumptions of what makes a free market. In the real world free market assumptions are commonly violated as noted earlier where it is illegal to do surgery without a license regardless of skill level. In minimum wage theories one has to ask “Why do some people accept minimum wage rates?” Many answers exist and some are within free market principles, however many are outside free market principles.
Hope that helps
C
CPA2
Guest
S
stinkcat_14
Guest
C
CPA2
Guest
T
Texas_Roofer
Guest
Thanks Bob can I ask a couple of simple quick questions how to they advise on pollution, power lines, water lines, sewer lines, roads, etc., be developed? All those things interfered with the market more than minimum wage. These utilities practically involve everyone every day.Don’t forget Keynes’ arch rival, Ludwig von Mises!
C
CPA2
Guest
I think that the world has lost its ability to discern what is the legitimate function of government.
**The natural order, including the climate, the financial order and everything else, is subserviant to the spiritual order. ** Confusion comes from Satan, not God.
An unjust law is no law at all. It is not worth the paper it is written on.
The first question that I would have is, “Is this man-made law valid?” If the law violates divine law or natural law, the man-made law is invalid. No one needs to obey an invalid law; in fact, you have a moral obligation to oppose it. That is why jury members have the right to judge the law, not just the facts. By a process called jury nullification jury members can refuse to uphold an unjust law.
Second, we never get everything that we want when we elect a candidate, even if we voted for him. When you go to the grocery store you vote with your dollars and you get exactly what you want.
The Supreme Court has NO jurisdiction over abortion because abortion is about divine law. Roe versus Wade is not worth the paper that it is written on. An unjust law is no law at all. The emperor has no clothes.
T
Texas_Roofer
Guest
I guess you forgot to place the answer in this section?
Wow, Wow, so now you are switching sides?
Okay so now I believe you changed sides. Your answers are Free Markets caused the problem and government should intervene to remedy the problem. Wow, I am surprised by this post.
C
CPA2
Guest
That is the answer that changed this country into a socialist country. “It is the economy, stupid.” I think that the only way to cure that assumption is to have another world-wide financial collapse.
My father and grandparents talked a lot about the Great Depression. I felt like I was there. Are we entering a Greater Depression?
Ludwig von Misses wrote, “Expansion of credit does lead to a boom at first, it is true, but sooner or later this boom is bound to crash and bring about a new depression. Only apparent and temporary relief can be won by tricks of banking and currency. In the long run they must land the nation in profounder catastrophe. For the damage such methods inflict on national well-being is all the heavier, the longer people have managed to deceive themselves with the illusion of prosperity which the continuous creation of credit has conjured up.”
“According to Jonathan Van Eck, since Greenspan has been the Fed’s top banana, more new money has been created than under all the other Fed chiefs combined. Not only that, in Greenspan’s reign more new money has been created than under all the Treasury secretaries in America’s history (Bonner).” However, Maximus Greenspan has lost his title to the current Fed Chairman.
Rothbard wrote about attempts to prolong the boom by manipulating interest rates. “Why do booms historically continue for several years? The answer is that as the boom begins to peter out from an injection of credit expansion, the banks inject a further dose. In short, the only way to avert the onset of the depression is to continue inflating money and credit. For only continual doses of new money on credit market will keep the boom going and the new stages profitable. Furthermore, only ever increasing doses can step up the boom, can lower interest rates further, and expand the production structure, for as the prices rise, more and more money will be needed to perform the same amount of work. Once the credit expansion stops, the market ratios are reestablished, and the seemingly glorious new investments turn out to be malinvestments, built on a foundation of sand. It is clear that prolonging the boom by ever lager doses of credit expansion will have only one result: to make the inevitable ensuing depression longer and more grueling.”
Greenspan lowered interest rates 11 times for a total of 4.75 basis points. I think that is a record. It looks like the current monetary policy is a recipe for hyper-inflation, economic bust and lower living standards.
T
Texas_Roofer
Guest
You want another financial collapse?
You blame the free market for the great depression?
You blame Alan Greenspan for the 2008 financial collapse?
…and your point is?
O
o_mlly
Guest
At the price where the supply (willing workers) meets the demand (willing employers) agree. Markets will be as many as there are different skills of labor demanded.
Those willing workers who demand a higher wage than the market price remain unemployed. They will re-think their wage demand or re-adjust their cost of living. That’s a good thing.
Those employers who offer a lower than market price do so because the price for their product or service is greater than the value the market for that product or service gives it. They go out of business. That’s a good thing.
A political entity setting a minimum wage rate higher than the market wage rate is never a good thing … forced rather than chosen unemployment results inevitably.
C
CPA2
Guest
I do not blame the free market for the Great Depression. I blame government. Greenspan wrote many great articles about gold, etc. BEFORE he was the Fed Chairman. He did a lot of stupid things AFTER he was Fed Chairman.
We are going to get an attitude adjustment, compliments of our own blindness. The socialist agenda of minimum wage, etc. will end in the destruction of the dollar. We are no different different than a drug addic. Our drug of choice is debt.
S
stinkcat_14
Guest
How does a policy that affects less than 1% of all workers lead to the destruction of the dollar?
C
CPA2
Guest
Socialism preaches the gospel of envy. One piece of socialist legislation, like the minimum wage, is not going to sink us. What is sinking us is the philosophy that is behind socialist legislation. Congress believes in salvation by law. If only there were a perfect law, there would be a perfect society?
I suspect that most accountants believe that it is better to have some voice in formulating accounting rules than to have no voice at all. Like it or not, they believe we are in a partnership with government. This attitude is common in the industries that I have observed. As you might suspect, I do not believe in a partnership with the SEC. I would like to see FASB be a truly independent body.
There is a prevalent attitude that life is so complicated that we need professionals, experts and government to make our decisions for us children. I turn that attitude upside down. **Life is so complicated that only we can know what is good for us. **This is decentralization. We practice decentralization in business management, but not in government.
Perfection is the enemy of good enough. There will always be a need for government. The real question is what is the function of government? **What is our objective, equality of outcome or equal opportunity? ** Do you want the assumptions of Adam Smith and the founding fathers, or the assumptions of Marx, Paul Samuelson and the socialists?
Let us face it. Rules and laws do not work. Even the SEC agrees with me on that point.
My favorite law is the law of unintended consequences. I believe in plan A, B, C, etc. I always had a planed route when I was an outside salesman, but I was quick to change when I had to.
I, like many other entrepreneurs, hate stupidity. **I have no patience for stupidity in organizations. ** We entrepreneurs are movers and shakers. Rules and laws are guides in the planning process. When our rules do not lead to our goals, we are quick to abandon the rules. I detest organizations that worship rules and laws. (It’s the law!) These organizations have no common sense. These organizations lose my respect.
T
TenBobNote
Guest
Of course.
Pollution is just a matter of private property rights, if you pollute your neighbors land, air, or water there will be compensation ruled by a court. It actually used to be like this and was working fine until courts started to rule that “for the common good” some industries can pollute more then others…You do, however, have the right to pollute your own land, as long as it does not effect others
As far as power lines, water lines, roads, etc go. Why can’t they be private? It would be much more efficient. Competition would spur better products, better ways of doing things.
lewrockwell.com/orig6/frazier3.html -article or roads
lewrockwell.com/rockwell/blackouts.html - article on electricity
lewrockwell.com/orig7/woods-d1.html - another on roads, makes points on sewer system as well.
- Status