McUnion
This story and the potential for change it brings excites me more than the #funemployment hippie* party, #Occupy, ever did. Insightful, Hamilton Nolan writes:
By 11:30 this morning, several dozen people wrapped in winter coats and wielding hand-drawn posters had assembled on the corner in front of the Wendy’s on the Fulton Mall in downtown Brooklyn, across from the Modell’s and the Bank of America, with the purpose of addressing that most fascinating question in labor relations: Can fast food workers ever be unionized? Here, in New York, today, a lot of fast food workers decided to skip the theory and proceed directly to the “Fuck you, pay me” phase of the process.
“I’m tired of being courteous to guests for $7.25!” thundered one of the workers to her peers. As a former McDonald’s worker who was never asked to work the register due to a lack of enthusiasm for customer service, I find that sentiment very difficult to argue with. The protest at Wendy’s was just one of several throughout New York City today, all part of the launch of a new unionization campaign aimed at NYC’s fast food workers, one which is backed by several activist groups and big unions and dozens of organizers and is not, I daresay, fucking around. Our city is, if you open your eyes, a bit, littered with fast food restaurants—it is only the most affluent neighborhoods that can afford not to have them. All of these restaurants are staffed by our fellow New Yorkers. Many of them are paid $7.25 an hour, the state minimum wage, and they’re scheduled for fewer than 30 hours a week, on average. They’re asking for $15 an hour. Still not all that much to live on. But much more than they get now.
(* Thanks to Mike Farmer for correcting my spelling error in an earlier post.)
In order for unionization to proceed successfully, labor must possess two essential characteristics: (I) it must be undervalued/exploited (at least according to the public,who might boycott), and (II) it must be organized enough to outlast management.
As to whether or not fast food labor is undervalued/exploited, here’s my reasoning on the topic:
(1) $7.25/hr. x 30 hours/wk x 52 weeks/year = $11,310/yr. – this is not enough to live anywhere in America let alone in New York City. Even outside of New York City, I don’t know how any one person could live off that, let alone people with families they have to support.
(2) I am aware that – like Walmart – many fast food restaurants exploit loopholes in regulations designed to improve the standard of living for everyone by putting a ceiling just below the level of hours worked where benefits start to legally kick in. They can do this because they know their labor force is at the lowest rung of the economic totem pole, and they know the only other alternative for fast food workers is to be unemployed.
That is to say, fast food restaurants prey on cheap labor from marginalized populations because they know such employees are desperate; and then they target those same populations with advertisements.
This is all part of a clear and systematic plan to exploit the poor for their labor, take what little money they have, cause them to die an early cardiovascular death as a direct result of over-consumption of fast food products, and then outsource the cleanup costs of whatever societal/medical ills inevitably result to taxpayers (Guess who’s going to be paying for these people’s medical care/health insurance with Obamacare about to kick in? Guess who’s paying for their medical care/health insurance right now in the more-civilized states?).
It’s fucking ridiculous.
So basically, to sum it up, I’m sold on the idea that fast food labor is undervalued and exploited, and if I were not already boycotting fast food for obvious health reasons, I would boycott for reasons of social and economic justice.
Regarding the second essential characteristic for unionization – organization – when I first read this story, I thought to myself: really!? You’re going to try to unionize now!? When fast food restaurants are enjoying record profits and unemployment rates are stratospheric!? They’ll just fire you and replace you with some immigrant or high school kid immediately.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize that the unionization of fast food workers is an evolutionary phenomenon.
What I mean by that is that, life at minimum wage sucks: more and more people are choosing to join the protests now than would have in the past because fast food employees are desperate now, whereas in the past they may have been too apathetic or too fearful to reach critical mass for unionization. Fast food workers now, when there are no other options, are motivated, maybe even motivated enough to stick it out, make a lot of noise, and inspire the kind of boycott shamelessly opportunistic and amoral, yet unimaginative and predictable fast food management routinely caves in to.
A few thoughts:
1. I have absolutely no sympathy for this statement: “I’m tired of being courteous to guests for $7.25!(5)” It is, contra the author, easy to argue with.
2. I’m not sure if this puts us in disagreement, but I’m not willing to say that a particular wage is too low because when you calculate it out it’s below what can be lived on. I see people do it, but it’s a misdiagnosis in my view because…
3. The bigger issue is that there are often not better and more economically valuable jobs for them to move on to. On that part, I am a lot more sympathetic to at least some – maybe most – McDonald’s workers.
4. Because of the above, I don’t particularly have a strong position on any attempt by McDonald’s workers to unionize.
5. I was actually a tad surprised that they do pay minimum wage in New York, apparently. They didn’t back when I worked there. In fact, I happened to be working there when the minimum wage changed, and my wage went up from 50 cents above minimum wage to remaining 50 cents above minimum wage. It was an incentive buffer to keep their jobs paying more than the minimum wage ones (my first “real” job was a minimum wage job, McDonald’s was #2). The minimum wage has gone up a couple dollars an hour since then, so maybe at some point they couldn’t have the incentive buffer anymore. If so, that might be instructive.
6. Perhaps a sign of the changing times, but McDonald’s was begging (some) employees to go full time when I worked there. The “(some)” was because this excluded dishwashers who – by and large – did not speak English.Report
I think what you write is a lot of good food for thought, but I have to disagree with this:
I have at least some sympathy for this statement. Perhaps it’s a question of temperament and your experiences working fast food or comparable jobs (I infer this from your statement about working in New York at 50 cents above the minimum wage) maybe differs or maybe you took different lessons from it. But in my experience, it can suck at least sometimes to have a job where one has to be courteous to people when those people treat you the way fast food customers often/sometimes treat fast food workers.
I’ll add that about 10 years ago, I had another customer service job at an in-bound call center for a bank. And in a certain way, it also sucked to be courteous to customers. But I got paid about $13 an hour, with benefits, so it didn’t suck as much.
Does my position, if true, mean necessarily fast food workers ought to unionize? Probably not. But if the workers here in Chicago tried to unionize, I would boycott until they were recognized. (I should admit that unless they do try to unionize, I will probably still patronize those establishments.)Report
I should add that if your only point was the “it sucks to be courteous to customers for $x” is easy to argue with, then I might agree with you partially. I would personally rather have a job where I had to be courteous to customers than not have a job at all.Report
Hell, I don’t like being courteous to customers at any pay rate level. Customer Service? The horrors!Report
Pierre, I am not exactly a “people person” and get exhausted dealing with people – often irate people – at a customer service job. So I guess in that way, I am not entirely unsympathetic. I do understand the unpleasantness. But, when you take a customer service job, dealing with customers is the job or at least a huge part of it. I dislike talking on the phone, but when I took a job answering phones for a satellite company several years ago, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to complain about the part of the job that involved talking on the phone. It would have been as unpleasant at $15/hour as it was at half that. But… it’s the job. Take it or leave it, to some extent.Report
I think I agree, with the qualification, as someone below has noted, that people in CSR jobs often have less of a choice. Even so, as I stated somewhere below, embracing that aspect of the job–or accepting it, as you did–probably makes the job more enjoyable.
I also say I have a tendency to overinterpret and take literally comments that are meant as hyperbole (“absolutely not sympathy”) when a more charitable reading (by me) would assume some exceptions might be entertained. Having said that, I probably indulge in hyperbole all the time (pun intended) without even realizing it.Report
Standard libertarian response to 1: “The wage rate is freely and voluntarily agreed upon by both parties. Do you hate freedom?”
SLR to 2: “Do you hate the poor?”
I’m on the side of living wages, myself. I’m also on the side of unions. At least in this context.
But … what if Wendy’s has to raise it’s prices because of union coercion? Doesn’t that mean Wendy’s is less profitable than McDs or BK or CarlsJr, and won’t that mean that the union is ushering their own future unemployment by actively bankrupting the firm?
Unfair advantage, eh? Only if McDs and BK and others don’t have to raise their wages as well. Then it’s a level playing field again. How’s that a bad thing?Report
This libertarian at least would rejoin by saying he supports a minimum income, and I suspect others would as well.Report
By what mechanism?Report
Obviously it would have to occur by taxation and redistribution, and I would argue that the best tax scheme for such would be consumption-based.Report
How does taxation and redistribution lead to a living wage, tho? The argument on the table is that social programs funded by those that make surplus wages are necessary components (maybe sufficient!) in firms paying less than living wages.
The argument I made on the Walmart thread was that the bare fact that firms exploit the social safety nets to lower their wage costs ought to present a real challenge to libertarians. In short, the dilemma is this: libertarians either need to oppose redistributive social programs or favor greater government intervention and/or unionization to minimize the takings on private citizens.Report
How exactly do they “exploit” the safety net, or perhaps, more directly, how are you defining exploit?
Employers pay the going rate. That means it is the rate that they can get the quality of applicant they want to accept the job with other employers competing for the same. If we build safety nets, I am sure that will have some effect on how many apply for jobs, how many hours they need to work, etc. I am not sure if this works out to a higher or lower wage all things considered, but it still leads to a going market rate. This then works out into number of jobs offered, prices of products and so on. I am not sure how this is exploitation, unless you are using a water downed term in a deceptively charged way.Report
I am not sure if this works out to a higher or lower wage all things considered, but it still leads to a going market rate.
So government intervention into the market doesn’t effect market rate just so long as there exists a market rate? Nice!Report
You aren’t following, and you never did define exploitation. When I use the term I mean taking unfair advantage of someone. Not sure how offering someone a job qualifies as exploitation.
All I am saying is supply meets demand somewhere. If the conditions change, this is still going to be true, even though the point they meet is different.Report
Good morning Roger. I’ll try to be a little clearer about what I think the issue is. I was much too quick about things last night. You wrote:
you never did define exploitation. When I use the term I mean taking unfair advantage of someone. Not sure how offering someone a job qualifies as exploitation.
Offering someone a job isn’t the issue here. ANd in and of itself it (and as stated – “offering” a job – it isn’t) a form of exploitation. But that’s not the dynamic in play, at least as I’m seeing it.
Let’s get hypothetical for a moment. Suppose that that an economic system includes public subsidies to the poor via taxing the income of wage earners. Suppose also that firms hire people who receive subsidies and offer them compensation packages which in effect only supplement government-based benefits, structured in such a way as to not jeopardize the continued receipt of those benefits. So compensation will be tailored to pay low hourly rates on a part-time basis without healthcare and so on.
Now, to the question: who’s being exploited here? Well, certainly not the firm offering a job, and not the person who accepts a job offer. I concede that. So that’s not the focus of my criticism.
So who’s being exploited? Well, let’s consider the above scenario is entrenched via policy. That is, firms are permitted (legally, morally, pragmatically, whatever) to hire employees without offering them full-time status at a wage rate where they can provide for themselves based solely on their wage-income (that it, without government subsidies to fill in the gap). And suppose that this state of affairs is justified because requiring firms to pay employees more (or even permitting unions to leverage higher wages from a firm) would increase the price of retail goods and services.
If so, then it seems to me that lower price is maintained only by subsides from income earning taxpayers. So the policy of prohibiting (legally, morally, whatever) wages from going up to a living compensation rate does a few things. It institutionalizes below-sustainable wage rate for employees which in turn institutionalizes – it in effect makes subsidies logically necessary rather than merely contingent – a program of subsides to the poor. And it institutionalizes a taking from income earning taxpayers for the purpose of subsidizing low prices at the retail level. That is, tax payers are subsidizing low prices (artificially low, at that point) via government intervention.
Of course, you seem to hold the view that maintaining low prices is sufficient reason to not raise wage rates for low-skilled employees. If so, then you’re effectively conceding that coercive redistribution of tax revenues to below-subsistence employees for the purpose of keeping prices low is justified. But it’s also clearly a case where maintaining the status quo requires that both the taking from tax payers and government intervention into market activity.
So who’s exploited? Tax payers. I mean, I’m just making a standard libertarian argument here against coercive takings by government, one they employ all the time against liberals. But in this case, liberals want wages to go up to a living wage, with the consequence being that prices actually better reflect real cost.Report
I was edgy last night too. I was all hyped up over the huge swell hitting Southern Cal this weekend. Best surf of the year. Five stars.
Thanks for explaining the E word. Yeah, I misunderstood how you were applying it to taxpayers.
I agree that government subsidies to the poor must affect the labor market. I am not sure how, exactly. Do they reduce the labor pool by encouraging unemployment,and thus increase wages over what they would otherwise be? Or do they increase the supply of higher qualified applicants that can live off the easier job and thus reduce the going wage rate (heads of households that would otherwise not be interested bid wages down)? How do the effects of this play out with the lowest skilled vs the relatively higher skilled? I have no idea how this plays out (if guessing I would assume it bids wages down), and would love to see a study analyzing it. Have you seen one?
I will certainly agree that structuring benefits or health care in such a way as FT qualifies and PT doesn’t is going to strongly distort the lower skilled market toward part timers, technological replacement, offshore outsourcing and contractors. This is a scary side effect of Obamacare and our dysfunctional employer paid health care markets.
I am still not sure if the net effect is lower wages or higher wages, but I think I can agree that the unintended side effect of our current social welfare system is sure to affect how labor and employers work. Different workers will apply for McJobs because they can now afford to. Some workers won’t apply for jobs at all, because they can afford to. Employers will be strongly penalized to hire full time.
Just to clarify though, this is not a policy “prohibiting wages from going up to a living compensation rate”, though it might be a policy which has the side effect of discouraging wages from going up. I think the distinction is important.
Also, note that lower/higher? prices and lower/higher? wages are not the only market distortions of our interference. The number of jobs offered and capital investment are also affected.
So, taxpayers elected representatives that approved safety nets to help people. Then these representatives approved Obamacare. Now we increasingly notice this is distorting markets. And the tax payer who supposedly elected these guys is exploited? And your solution isn’t to fix the distortions (whatever they are) it is to now add on more regulation in the way of mandatory living wages?
Here are some questions… Where were all the liberal arguments for less market distortions when you guys built the current safety nets and Obamacare?
Is there any path that leads not to more regulation and market distortion, but instead to less?
Would it be more fair to say that the non liberals who voted against the current state of affairs were the ones that were exploited, by being forced to subsidize this interference?
Most importantly can you think of a creative way to construct your living wage in such a way that it has less market distortion? This may be the best area for us to agree on. I am open for suggestions.Report
Generally, I support unionization. If management is allowed to be organized, labor should also be allowed, and encouraged, to be organized. Corruption should be punished on an individual basis, and CEOs and labor leaders that break laws should be prosecuted with equal vigor. We should lock up the BP executives who were complicit in the destruction in the Gulf of Mexico. Seriously.
The important point that I think a lot of people miss – both libertarians and non-liberatarians – is that a lot of this is really up to consumers; or, it should be in an ideal system.
The ideal economy is one in which consumers patronize businesses that have products that offer overall systemic utility gains and that also fairly compensate producers.
Consumers should evaluate that!
As for me, I strongly favor redistribution, but I think the system for redistribution that we have now is essentially dysfunctional: redistribution from the have-nots to the haves – i.e. TARP, corn subsidies – is far more pervasive than redistribution from the haves to the have-nots – i.e. our loophole-infested income tax system.
We should have a tax system that derives most of its revenue from consumption (like a VAT) and that is clear and simple for anyone to understand. The main objective for welfare of the tax collected from such a system should be towards maintaining a minimal income for those individuals who are unfortunate enough to not make a living wage. We should also continue to fund the various unemployment services that help match the skills of individuals to job openings or that encourage such individuals to enroll in training that will increase their accessibility to the labor market. This especially since a huge portion of our unemployed have few marketable skills and our present system does little to nothing to rectify this!
Like any employee retirement plan, the government should match contributions as much as it can, but in the end there will be people who fail under even these incredibly cooperative standards. These individuals should at least be allowed to receive health care and other rights we as a society deem essential, but the system should be set up to minimize such individuals, and I think it can be if it is restructured in ways that really are threatening to only the present “bipartisan” political establishment in that they threaten to end the stranglehold that various special interests have upon us all.Report
I agree with much of this comment, Christopher.Report
I’ve worked for BP in inspections, and I can tell you that one thing that I really liked about working for them was their dedication to environmental sensitivity. (Dedication to safety is a big #2.)
I don’t think there was complicity at the executive level with the Gulf disaster.
I don’t think there was a lot of oversight at the operations level.
But this is more an issue of respondeat superior; the owner is liable for the contractor, who is in turn liable for the sub.
I’ve worked for an awful lot of oil companies, and BP stands out among them all as being environmentally-minded.
The union issues I’ll reserve for a comment below.Report
+1. Yeah, I heard an earful from the actual BP engineers, who would never have let half the sloppiness of that site go. They’ve got too much pride in their work.
The executive COULD NOT have NOT been complicit, except by willful blindness or sheer incompetence. When competent folks say “this is how much it’s gonna cost” and the other guy underbids by a good deal… well, there’s a reason it was outsourced, capiche?Report
This libertarian at least would rejoin by saying he supports a minimum income, and I suspect others would as well.
Roger answered that open question. A living income is “liberal tyranny”!! Nope, there’s market wages and that’s it. And if the government provides all sorts of subsidies that firms leverage their compensation against, well, those are still market wages.
It’s all about the individual, see. Except when it isn’t.Report
SW,
You aren’t trying very hard to understand me, are you? I do not support higher minimum wages or high mandatory benefits. The reason is because they distort the market and eliminate many low skilled jobs. If you wish to dispute this please do, but please don’t just refuse to acknowledge it.
I do support safety nets, private and public. I think our current safety nets are outrageously inefficient and poorly designed, but they do a good job of taking care of our poor (and would do much better if designed wisely). Are you aware of poor that are better off than ours? Why. Where?Report
See the comment I just posted for a more elaborate explanation of what I’m actually arguing/trying to argue/trying to get clear on/failing to communicate very effectively over these last few threads dealing with this topic.Report
I get both of you. It seems like you’re talking past each other.Report
Yes. In Israel. Because we support them more efficiently than we support Americans.Report
Actually I suspect that if you went to Williston, ND or Pleasanton, Tx you would find fast food workers makeing more than the minimum wage, or Sonora, Tx (all be it the only fast food place there is a Dairy Queen). As an Oil boomtown, the fast food places have to pay more than the minimum wage to get any workers. (Note that it appears in Sutton County Tx (Sonora) the average wage is 115k, all be it only 4128 folks live in the county. Of course if you can get a commercial drivers license one can do significantly better than minimum wage, but many fail the drug tests. Actually during the height of the Clinton boom I did see signs offereing more than minimum wage at the fast food places as they had to to hire. However with the high unemployment they do not have to now.
Of course one thing that is coming is to eliminate the human element in order taking, by providing a central location to take an order, or a self service order device.Report
Out west, there are fast food places that have gone out of business for lack of employees, despite offering very generous wages. So you speak to the truth. That, however, doesn’t help the people in New York as much. (And, it should be said, housing in these boomtowns can be expensive, so you’re not pocketing all the extra money.)
That actually may explain my experiences above. I worked at McD’s in the Clinton years. It’s possible they ceased the incentive buffer in response to rising unemployment. On the other hand, even then, there were still places that paid minimum wage.
I’m not sure if that’s coming or not. It’s been tried, with incentives (JITB had “Get two free tacos by ordering from this kiosk”) and it didn’t take. HOWEVER, and this is important, the extent to which customers don’t like the idea may become irrelevant if wages are jacked up high enough.Report
Chris, I’ve been thinking about this post in conjunction with the earlier Walmart post, and now I’m wondering something, to wit: I wonder how many firms rely on/exploit the social safety net as a way to keep wages down? It seem to me like it’s systemic. The entire culture of firms which have “entry level” “employment opportunities” leverages it’s wages against the subsidies already received by a substantial number of its “entry level” employees.
Or in other words: Could American Business in the new millennium be built on the back of redistributive social programs?Report
Of course. As I wrote in the comments to the Walmart post, the first company I worked for in Japan did exactly that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(eikaiwa)#Employment_and_labor_relationsReport
I also worked for NOVA. Nova seems a bit different though because their model was to have a constantly revolving stream of early to mid 20-somethings that wanted to live in Japan for a year or two.
I was there from 2002-2003 so most of this stuff happened after my time. Though there was still plenty of grumbling about NOVA during my employment with the company. Watching the bankruptcy crisis from a distance was an interesting experience.Report
Stillwater, FWIW I touched on that way back here.Report
Simply get two part time jobs if you only make minimum wage and get 30 hours a week. Don’t buy shit you don’t need like bling bling and spinner TWIn TwIn rims. Don’t have 20 kids. Do some excercize. Stupid people will fail and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Unacceptable, unions are worthless. Some union president goon is also getting fat off the union fees. If you want to make more than minimum wage get your shit together and do something about it. Btw, fast food sucks!Report
Some
union president goonCEO is also getting fat off theunion feescorporate profits.Take THAT.Report
Unions or Die! That underline function you got there is pretty cool, can you do that on an iPhone?Report
It’s not an UNDERLINE, it’s a STRIKETHROUGH.Report
Ok, strike through, can you do it on an iPhone?Report
Stillwater, if you don’t like corporate CEO’s getting fat off profits simply don’t buy their products.Report
But if I don’t buy their products because they
pay less than livingpay dyingincrease-the-takings-from-taxpayers-because-firms-pay-wages-leveraged-against-the-social-safety-nets? Or support the unionization effort? Or am part of the unionization effort? What then?{{Strikethrough!}}Report
That strike through is like a samurai sword in a Kill Bill movie, you got me through the heart. You killed me with that last one. Try one comment without the strike throughReport
Corruption should be punished wherever it exists and at the individual level.Report
Yes, punish the Union goons.Report
Well, now I can post without feeling like the dumbest one in the room. Thanks for that Bojangles.
Btw, the head of the largest union in the US, the United Federation of Teachers makes just south of 150k and is currently living with his mother in Brooklyn after losing his house to Super Storm Sandy.
As for the rest of the racist shit you spouted, the idea that one could even afford some of the stuff you mentioned making what fast food workers make is beyond reason. But then again I’m probably the idiot for taking the Troll bate.Report
Have a unionized Bigmac, you could use the comatose.Report
You have broken the comment rules with this partially ad hoc reply Mr. Harris.Report
Oops, *ad homReport
Sorry, I was genuinely offended by what I found to be an egregiously repulsive comment. I mistakenly believed that the author’s use of an explative warranted a strong response. I thought, incorrectly, that an attack blanketed in self-deprecation would strike the proper balance between vitriol and jocularity. Won’t happen again.Report
I thought your response was more or less in line with what the original comment was asking for, really.
So in that way, it wasn’t inappropriate.Report
Stop wafting your own fart into your nose Mr. Calahan.Report
Mr. Harris, good teachers don’t need unions, only the lazy teachers need them. And 150k is too much for Mr. Teachers union president considering he works protect lazy teachers.Report
Arguing by assertion is not generally regarded as particularly compelling, in these parts.Report
Well excuse me Mr. Calahan. I’m sorry I banked on the people in these parts to know that unions breed laziness. Must I spell that out for everyone.Report
Some sort of evidence to support that claim would probably be useful, yes.
Good luck finding it (anecdotes about guys taking breaks while working on the roads are insufficient.)
To properly buttress up this claim, of course, you’ll also need to show that union workers are not only lazy, generally, but they’re also lazier than the average American worker.
Also, a stylistic criticism, if I may… using really crude language to link a specific, really bad stereotype of a minority group (“Don’t buy shit you don’t need like bling bling and spinner TWIn TwIn rims.”) to all minimum wage earners is, frankly, bullshit. If you’re not a racist, you’re clearly attempting to act just enough like one that people who disagree with you will jump on you and you can mewl foul and reverse racism and some other idiocy. Check that at the door or comment somewhere else, please.Report
Not that a lazy unionized worker is lazier than your average worker, it’s the unionized worker can slack off more without being fired. The union has put in place a series of steps and red tape to punish or fire workers. Must I elaborate more?
You use the term racist loosely. I think the definition of a racist is to hate a person because of their skin color, ethnicity, etc. a stereotypical statement is far from being racist. It’s ok to dislike a person based on their behavior. I can say I dislike people who drive down the street playing rap music at high volumes without being a racist. You can’t tell me you have never seen a fast food worker who drives car with spinner rims. They do sell cheaper versions you know that a Wendy’s worker could afford I’d they were not smart about their budget.Report
If I had said, don’t buy shit like a big screen TV, would that have made you feel better.Report
I understand the logic behind the idea that unions make it more difficult to fire workers. That’s sorta what they’re supposed to do, after all. The idea that they make it significantly more difficult to fire bad workers needs a bit more than just a logic chain, you need some empirical evidence.
It’s really freakin hard to fire bad workers at all sorts of institutions, with or without union labor. Making it more or less hard matters only if it actually encourages employers to fire bad workers. In my experience – having not once worked in a union shop, mind you – most employers don’t fire bad workers. I’ve seen them at every job I’ve ever worked at, since I was fifteen. Many of them were in management, no less. I’m unconvinced that all of the bad apples that work in union shops would suddenly disappear tomorrow if their union protection disappeared and finally it was okay to fire that guy. I really doubt it would even be a significant percentage of ’em.
I did not call you a racist. However, your comment clearly singled out a particular stereotype and ignored other low-wage earners, using pejorative language. By specifically excluding, say, people who blow money on iPads or blow money on any one of any numerous other purchases I would consider luxury items, you’re either consciously or unconsciously inviting someone to accuse you of being a racist. It’s trollish, and it’s cheap. If you don’t like people on minimum wage blowing money on what you consider to be luxuries, say that. That’s not arguable, really. Most people would agree with you. Framing it the way you did is inviting people to disagree with you for something you’re implying, not saying. Knock that off.
I think that might be because you’re an ass, but that doesn’t make you a racist. Jury is still out on that charge, though.
It’s certainly legitimate to disapprove of anybody egregiously engaging in noise pollution of any sort. On the other hand, if you start saying, “I hate people who blast rap music” and then you just give the white kids or the Asian kids a break when they’re blasting George Thorogood or K-pop or whatever, you have to take the “blast” qualifier out. You’re not mad about noise pollution. You’re mad about rap music. It’s okay to be mad about rap music, but that’s not the same thing as being disapproving of people who engage in noise pollution. The first is a matter of taste. The second is disapproving of people who are being impolite. When you conflate the two you wind up disliking one group of people who are doing the same thing as another group of people, except they’re doing it with a style you don’t like. Hey, you can do that, but that’s not a principled objection, it’s just a matter of taste.
I have never seen a fast food worker with $2,000 rims on his car, no. Not of any ethnicity. I have seen a few fast food workers with expensive luxury items, of course, but those are generally high school kids who get their gadgets from Mom and Pop and sack their part time income in the can for beer money when they’re in college.
I see a lot of low-income parents at my kids’ school. 70% of the school population is on free/assisted lunch, which puts them at or near (or under) the poverty line in southern California. These people are poor. Most of them work two or more jobs. Most of them can only have part-time employment, because full-time employment is off the table, as nobody wants to pay their health insurance. I can’t say that I see any of them trucking around with spinny rims or iPhones or Versace purses or ridiculous luxury items.Report
Shame on you Mr. Callahan for using an ad hom, tsk, tsk. Calling me an ass. Knock that off.
I sir, have worked in a union shop and know by experience that a union has a significant role in the reduction of productivity. One woman in particular would constantly come to work stoned and reeking of weed. She would constantly fall behind in her work and was able to do so under the protection of the union. Had it not been a union shop she would have been fired for showing up to work under the influence.
Maybe you need to get out more then if you haven’t seen a fast food worker driving around with Dub spinners. Those parents you speak of probably have cars and TVs, those are a luxury my friend. You are telling me they don’t have cell phones?Report
Well now, here’s just the sort of anecdotal evidence that’s useless in a discussion like this. Who’s to say she WOULD have been fired if she weren’t being protected by a union? And in which industry can the union protect an obviously intoxicated worker from getting shown the exit?
Much of what you are saying doesn’t pass the smell test. I’m finding it harder and harder to take your comments serious Bojangles.Report
Careful, Bojangles, they might put you on the masthead of you keep the thinky veiled racism going.
Oh and I wish you would go away.Report
You are correct sir! Such WOULD be the case if the unqualified rubes who hold sway over matters of education policy, school districts, budget decisions, and the lives of children weren’t equally or more corrupt than the unions tasked with representing teachers.
You see Mr. Bojangles, elected officials and their cronies come and go; some like to work with all interested stakeholding parties to make decisions that are pragmatic and helpful, while others use their power for personal or political gain. Unfortunately for teachers, they have to work under whatever decent or horrible régime passes through. The point of the union is to help stabilize the perminant labor supply of teachers, principals, aides, and janitors by collectively bargaining on their behalf.
Hard as this may be to believe, the vast majority of schools systems with unions perform quite well, in fact states where unions are strong generally outperform states where there are so-called right to work laws or where unions are weak. The state with the best educational outcomes, Massachusetts, also has the highest paid teachers and strong statewide teachers unions .
Teachers Unions have been around since the turn of the last century. Since that time they have acted in the best interests of their members as well as society by pushing back against the repressive responses to various social movements such as The Red Scares of the 30s and 40s, feminism, black power, and currently, the modern reform movement.
And as far as your last point, are you asserting that all of the nearly 100k public school teachers in New York City are lazy?Report
California has strong teacher unions if I’m not mistaken and performs not so well but then I think we need to see the numbers to support our claims. Yes, unions have been around forever and now it’s time for them to go. My last point was that 150k is too much compensation for the head of the union.
Can you tell us how many companies with strong unions outperform companies without? I think the McUnion article was focused on business anyway rather than teaching.Report
California’s “not performing so well” is largely tied to our per-pupil funding, which is atrociously low, not the union, really.
FWIW, I’m quite happy with our public school, the teachers are great and the principle does a very good job as well. My biggest complaint is that the school is chronically underfunded and lacks a bunch of the support structures that would really help the kids out, particularly the lower income kids.Report
Well maybe if the senior teachers who are benefiting from high salaries due to the union influence took a pay cut then there would be more money for under privileged kids.Report
Nonsense! If you work at your profession long enough you deserve both a higher degree of respect AND a higher level of compensation. Unions don’t shield bad teachers from getting fired, they negotiate for judicial safeguards in the event a teacher is accused of wrongdoing by a child or supervisor. Teachers at all levels can be removed from the classroom with just cause, the process isn’t actually that difficult. In the past superintendents on down to principals were patronage appointments in many large cities. Some of the worst urban corruption existed in and around the Boards of Ed. Protection from this corruption was hard fought and won by the teacher’s unions. Up until more recently, there were far fewer qualifications required of high level supervisors than there were for teachers. As schools systems have developed higher standards for their managers, so too have unions given back many of the hard fought and won safeguards they once enjoyed.
Even though union power has been diminished over the years, it remains the only real counter to the zealotry of many in the so-called Ed. Reform Movement.
As for teachers salaries, it’s well known that teachers make less than their peers with the same level education. Only in the wealthiest of school districts do teachers salaries approach six figures, and that’s only after having put in decades of service. And on what planet is 150k too much to earn for the head of an organization with hundreds of thousands of members and a large support staff? If he were a top executive in the private sector he’d be earning 5-10 times more.Report
“If you work at your profession long enough you deserve both a higher degree of respect AND a higher level of compensation.”
Although this often can be true and often is true, it is not necessarily true in all cases. It depends upon whether the person actually gains in skills and performance, and/or whether the task is still in demand, and/or whether the supply or competition for the profession changes.Report
Roger, does a 90% increase in wages over a quarter century seem reasonable to you, even if the worker in question only improves marginally at their field of expertise?Report
Mr Harris,
Again, it depends upon demand for the service, supply of competing applicants and degree of productivity enhancement.Report
Can you also explain to me how this works in a world where customer (student) is mandated to receive the service in question? I get that in actual markets businesses compete for customers and staffing needs are based on supply and demand, but how does this square with education, where the expectation is that all students are required to get the same level of service and the demand for teachers is based more on yearly tax collection then on factors like providing a better learning environment and this, a better product?Report
Ah, but: “California ranks number one in the highest pensions for public employees — outranking even New York and New Jersey. Here there are a whopping 856,000 teachers and other school personnel across 1,900 districts currently within the California State Teachers Retirement System. The average pension for each of those teachers in California is $1 million over a 20-year period. Which means we have created a “millionaire teachers” class within the California economy.”
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2012/09/21/californias-public-pension-jackpot/
See also Cato’s Adam Schaeffer, who as of 2010 wrote that CA jiggles the numbers egregiously on per-pupil spending:
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2010/08/20/lausd-spends-30k-per-student/
“The research by Adam Schaeffer of the Cato Institute’s Center for Education Freedom seemed shocking: The Los Angeles Unified School District spent $29,780 per student in fiscal year 2007-08. That’s way above the $10,000 as advertised by the school district, and as used in most studies.
The $29,780 per student figure means a class of 25 students would spend $744,500 a year.
I talked to Schaeffer and had him send me his research, which I’ll append to this article. He also pointed to a more comprehensive study he conducted in March, “They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools,” which tracked and compared school-district spending around the country. It includes data on LAUSD that was updated in his more recent research. The earlier study found a wide divergence in total spending in California school districts, such as only $11,215 for Linwood Unified and $20,751 for Beverly Hills Unified.
Basically, what Schaeffer found was that the LAUSD doesn’t count capital spending, such as from local and state bond measures passed by voters.”
We’re being lied to, as usual. The most heavily-taxed state in the union just raised taxes some more. For the children [although the money will likely go to public unions, not necessarily the schools].Report
Agree with Tom. The inflation adjusted cost to educate a kid has doubled in last 30 years and performance has held constant.Report
Not true. Performance on the NEAP, the only accurate measure of students accountability because state tests vary in difficulty and standards (although admittedly the Common Core is attempting to change this), has increased measurably over the last 30 years.
This is no small feat considering demographic shifts in income disparity, race, and immigration.Report
Mr H,
The scorecard for cost effectiveness is really, really bad in education. See the Cato charts embedded in this link
http://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2012/10/big-bird-may-be-hard-to-cut-this-one.html
The results are even worse for college, though for different reasons.Report
Roger,
These Cato graphs illustrating the rise in educational spending as compared to the percentage change in standardized test scores are a bit misleading to say the least. I understand how easy it can be to think of schools as a mill churning out a certain product that we all want to be able to measure so we can compare one mill with another mill, but that’s how G.W. Bush’s NCLB legislation has trained people to think. America actually does quite well in testing. Its just that we have a lot more poor and immigrant English language learning students who perform poorly on these things than the other countries we’re constantly being compared to.
http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html
The NEAP and the SAT results in the Cato chart actually show something quite interesting. In the NEAP results Reading and math scores showed growth in most years. Growth is growth. Small gains are usually the best one can expect from one year to the next nationally. For NEAP scores to look anything more than flat on that graph there would have to growth in excess of the prior year for all 40 years. That would be like some sort of education myrical of mythic proportions if that were to take place. I can’t speak to why science shows negative growth from the 70s into the 80s, but as is the case with any testing numbers, what were demographic shifts in income, immigration, and special needs status? These factors influence educational outcomes more than what happens in the classroom on the taxpayer’s dime.
With SAT scores the water is a little less muddy. There are just way more people taking the thing now than in 1970. And more means more students with lower incomes and immigrants and kids who weren’t that bright who would have worked in manufacturing or in a union but found that higher education was a better choice because there were fewer factories and fewer union jobs in the 80s and 90s etc. etc.
As for expenditures, yes, we are spending 90% more today in inflation-adjusted dollars than we were in 1970. We’ve also had to build more schools, buy more technology, accommodate more special needs students (Americans with Disabilities Act, 1991), and graduate more students from high school than we did in 1970.
But the graphs are misleading and they don’t even appear to match each other’s data. One says we’ve raised spending per pupil 90% in 40 years, the other says we’ve raised spending 120% during the same period. The second graph clearly is trying to mislead to make the results appear more striking to the casual observer. The numbers also indicate per pupil spending totals over the course of 13 years, the amount of time it take to complete a full k-12 education. In 1970 that figure was about 4200 a year, per pupil. In 2010 the per pupil per year expenditure was 11,500 – a figure which is not at all accurate according to the census data provided in one of the other threads here.
These charts are simply bad. But to rest on this point alone would miss a more salient point about cost effectiveness and education. How does one measure the cost effectiveness of education? Forget about test scores, these bugaboos are great for measuring how good someone is at taking a test or at suggesting the likelihood of future wealth. Is personal wealth the only thing education as to offer us? Aren’t we still the most successful civilization of all time? I know China’s on our heels but, last I checked we still dominate the world in most of the important categories like power and money.
And what amount of money would cause us to reach the equilibrium point between expenditures and outcomes? There is not now nor will there ever be a consensus on this because the wealthy will continue to support a system where they pay more and get more while the poor are simply looking for the best option available to them.
Finally, teacher’s incomes have not really grown at all over the last 20 years (don’t have the data on 1970-1990 handy). So, I’m going to have to assume that your observation has more to say about policy then the success (of failure!) of teachers union to raise education spending.
Hope this clears things.Report
Thanks Mr H,
Good points. I agree the SAT scores need to be adjusted for numbers taking them, and that all the measures would be improved if adjusted for other factors such as race, income, immigration, special needs, etc.
As someone who worked around bureaucrats for thirty years, I am well aware that there are always great reasons to build more, create new programs, hire more, add new red tape, audit more, write more procedures, and give bigger raises. Bureaucracies thrive on this and so do the people that run them. Those that don’t are not attracted to bureaucracies and won’t last if they stumble into one.
Bureaucracies are bad,but bureaucratic monopolies (even local monopolies) are catastrophic. There is no effective check on cost effectiveness. Thirty years later, it all adds up to twice as much being spent with no appreciable gain in outcomes.
How would I address this inevitability in bureaucracy? I would do the only technique that I have ever seen work. I would encourage schools and teachers to compete for education dollars. I would encourage the creation of institutions which compete to educate more efficiently and effectively. Effectiveness is of course not measured just on results, but on improvement, and based upon the level of challenge. A small gain for a special need kid may be much harder than a big one for a little genius.
I am extremely impressed with the tests that my grandson takes in Illinois. They track his performance in all academic fields with amazing granularity. They don’t just score science, but also the component pieces of understanding the discipline. They show where he was, they show where he has progressed, and where his challenge areas are. This is one essential part of tracking learning, but it isn’t everything, There is also graduation rates, success in college, success in later life, and various subjective things that parents and consumer information entities can tabulate.
Every parent should be allowed to know how well their dollars are spent and what the composite cost effectiveness of their investment is.
I believe there is only one possible outcome in our current system. Increasing inefficiency. Competition and consumer choice offer ways out. The other study I shared validates that freed markets are our best, and probably our only hope.Report
Thanks Roger, good discussion.
I think tests deserve a place in education and I think there certainly are good ones available. But there’s more and more evidence that tying test results to teacher job security or whether or not a school gets to exist is a recipe for worse, not better long term outcomes. Your grandson no doubt goes to a school where they have a rich curriculum, well trained teachers, and well kept facilities. The results of the tests he takes will reflect this. But many schools, especially ones in urban centers will react to punitive measures by scrambling to do whatever they can to boost their test scores and that usually means drilling students in test-taking techniques. Parents in affluent schools districts reject these methods, why should they be allowed to exist in poorer school districts?
Will competition help? Only when schools exist on a level playing field. Throw out the per pupil funding numbers Tom keeps hammering home,in truth, I kind of agree with this line of reasoning. Money doesn’t actually increase results the way, say, better teachers do. What money does accomplish is shrinking class sizes and leveling the playing field.
But here’s the thing about competition; besides the fact that competition by definition creates winners and losers and the goal of education is to make everyone a winner, people don’t really want to have an abundance of choices. They want community schools. They want to belong to parent/teacher associations and chaperone Halloween dances with their neighbors and friends. For much of America school choice would be a voucher to opt out of the local public school in order to go to the local parochial school. Expensive prep schools won’t even actor into the equation for all but the best and the brightest, becoming the de facto magnet school for that area. The important thing is that schools receiving public dollars be held accountable in the same ways public schools are. When this doesn’t happen you get poorly financed and run for-profits and zealous, proselytizing religious academies.Report
Mr H,
I greatly agree. I am not trying to convince you,and I recognize you know much more about the topic than me. Let me add though that I am not arguing for competition within government bureaucracies. I am arguing for structured market competition.
I find it unconscionable that schools are all expected to play on an unlevel playing field even though they have totally different populations of students.
The point is that I would not want to send my kid to a school that taught him how to take tests so the school can look good. I would not want to send him to the one with best average results either. I want to send him to one where he learns as much as possible to prepare him for life. I do not believe a politically charged bureaucracy is ever capable of that. I don’t think many private firms could do it either. But I think that if given enough time, with enough brilliant and caring minds such as yours that some systems could be built that did a significantly better job than what we have today. Other firms would replicate these successes and add to them. That is the key to progress, and I would not expect it from a monopoly.
Yes there are winners and losers, but the competition needs to be set so that what loses is primarily bad ideas or teaching methodologies. If we design a system where parents can choose better firms, better teachers and better methods, then firms will borrow and steal good ideas from each other.
I know I am talking pie in the sky. I am talking about a different paradigm from the ground up.
And no, I do not approve of the religious crap that parents try to build in. If they want to teach cave men ate dinosaurs, then they need to do that after school.
In the end, the question I ask is if you were to start over from the ground up, what kind of education system could be built? I think you could do much, much better than what we have today.Report
Roger, thanks for the praise. Countries who outperform us in education are smaller and more homogenous. The best ones, like Finland, are simultaneously top-down and respectful of the teacher’s autonomy in the classroom. In the U.S. financing’s the key and this occurs on the state and local level giving us a sort of patchwork quilt of regional and income diversity.
In spite of this our top and middle income students continue to perform well against international competition and have shown some growth over the years. American observers are always amazed at how sparse and limited the facilities are at school in other countries, especially the ones who outperform us on a national level, but in those places education is king, and family pressure to do well in school is much greater than it is here (generally speaking).
I’ve argued elsewhere on this site that I think our education system is quite solid. It’s the American culture that needs improving (does this make me conservative?). All this talk about market-based solutions allows parents off the hook somewhat for the immensely important role they have to play in the life-long education of their children. I understand and sympathize with the argument that we pay too much for education. Perhaps creating market-based competition will drive down costs. At the end of the day what we’re really talking about is the high price of educating poor children because those who are better off will continue to have better facilities, teachers, etc.
But to answer your culminating question; if we tore it all down and started from scratch what would it look like? I think it would have to start with a clear understanding that parents and teachers are partners in the responsibility of educating children. We’re never going to have a national socialized school system where standards are universally accepted by everyone despite the current attempts being made by Pres. Obama. We’re still a nation with too many regional and economic differences, schools need to reflect and celebrate these differences so children develop a sense of their identity and responsibilities in society. The Puritans created mandatory education because children would one day become adults who would participate in society and they needed to be prepared for this. Today we think of education as a gateway to future financial success, this is exactly the wrong way to go about it. At some point we began looking at schools as a way to close the achievement gap or to give students the tools to succeed and we began measuring them based on this set of unrealistic expectations. Students need to acquire skills so they can be creative and productive members of society, so they can appreciate that knowledge and the life-long pursuit of it are infinitely more valuable than following the path that leads to the right Ivy League school so they can insure job placement post graduation.
But let’s get real here, we’ve gone too far down the free market rabbit hole to turn the whole thing around. If I want a school that resembles this sort of thing I can either find one and pay for it or convince other educators to try and create one as a charter. For now, I’m still working on my vision, but I’ll keep you posted when I figure it out.Report
Fantastic comment, Mr Harris. Thanks!Report
The same inflation adjusted cost increase is seen in legal services, financial services (until 2007, likely due to the financial clusterf***), medical services, and veterinary services.
Notice a pattern here? Services provided by college-educated and credentialed professionals, not capable of being imported from China, nor under downward wage pressure from illegal immigration.
You’re engaging in fallacious, ad-hoc, theorizing rather than any kind of honest search for truth. But… it supports your political commitments so it’s all good, right?Report
RR,
Yes I see a pattern. These are all areas with massive, systemic government interference and / or entrance barriers. Though I know nothing of veterinary costs or performance.Report
Exorbitant teacher pensions and dishonest $per-pupil figures.
“California ranks number one in the highest pensions for public employees — outranking even New York and New Jersey. Here there are a whopping 856,000 teachers and other school personnel across 1,900 districts currently within the California State Teachers Retirement System. The average pension for each of those teachers in California is $1 million over a 20-year period. Which means we have created a “millionaire teachers” class within the California economy.”
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2012/09/21/californias-public-pension-jackpot/
See also Cato’s Adam Schaeffer, who as of 2010 wrote that CA jiggles the numbers egregiously on per-pupil spending:
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2010/08/20/lausd-spends-30k-per-student/
“The research by Adam Schaeffer of the Cato Institute’s Center for Education Freedom seemed shocking: The Los Angeles Unified School District spent $29,780 per student in fiscal year 2007-08. That’s way above the $10,000 as advertised by the school district, and as used in most studies.
The $29,780 per student figure means a class of 25 students would spend $744,500 a year.
I talked to Schaeffer and had him send me his research, which I’ll append to this article. He also pointed to a more comprehensive study he conducted in March, “They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools,” which tracked and compared school-district spending around the country. It includes data on LAUSD that was updated in his more recent research. The earlier study found a wide divergence in total spending in California school districts, such as only $11,215 for Linwood Unified and $20,751 for Beverly Hills Unified.
Basically, what Schaeffer found was that the LAUSD doesn’t count capital spending, such as from local and state bond measures passed by voters.”
Playing ad hom on Roger ignores the real problem here, the educrat establishment playing hide the salami on the taxpayer.Report
FTR, the legal market is under heavy rate pressure. Not teachers.
“Over the past five to ten years, there has been a significant shift in the economics of the legal market. Previously law firms were able to raise rates to increase profit, typically 8-10 percent each year, with costs growing at only 4-5%. These rate increases resulted in increased profit. About 10 years ago, things began to change. The market finally became saturated with a sufficient number of lawyers (a.k.a. supply) so economic forces took over and started to impact prices.”
Etc. Boldface mine. 😉
http://www.geeklawblog.com/2012/10/the-economics-of-law-and-future-of_26.htmlReport
Tom, I’m on my school site council. We don’t spend $30k per kid.
Not even close.Report
I’m seriously questioning the hell out of that 30k figure. The richest public schools I’ve ever heard of are less than 10k a student. Texas seems to average around 3 to 5k, with the rich districts hitting maybe 6 to 8k and the rural and urban poor doing it with less than 1500 a year.
Suspicious numbers are suspicious, but I’m sure they’re taken as gospel by people who want to believe it.Report
Take it up with Cato if you’re actually interested in the truth.Report
The dishonesty in the Cato numbers is similar to their dishonesty on a trillion dollars of welfare.
When you count capital construction costs in these figures, they’ll vary wildly depending on when new school construction amd capital development is done.
Also, the average cost of tuition obscurs the very, very, very high costs of special needs children, per-pupil. It may be that a public school district’s costs go up 10 or 20 percent just because of a slight increase in the number of special needs kids over the number in private schools. Seriously.
I do think there is waste in the public school systems with oversight of teachers and programs to improve teaching and test scores, and all the bureaucrap that goes with it. But that could be cut without scrapping public schools or instituting charters or killing unions.Report
Also, school funding is unequal, to the detriment of the poor. That should be remedied, we all can agree.?Report
CA is #1 in pensions and near-last in $pupil spending. Something smells here.Report
“Something smells here.”
Yep, it’s spelled Ca-ca A**-fluid T*rds OffalReport
There are no superfluous personnel at our school. We don’t even have a full time nurse; the librarian is paid for via a grant, as there is no money in the fund to pay for her out of the general fund. All of the classes are large.
I don’t know any of the faculty’s salaries, but I know what the aggregate faculty sum is and it’s not that much. They certainly don’t make anywhere near what I do.
Capital expenditures are indeed not counted in the yearly budget, because they’re not paid for via the per-pupil allocation from the state, nor from the supplemental funds we get from the feds for the school lunch program and the economic disadvantaged kids allowance.
Note: capital expenditures for private schools are pretty much never put on the budget, either. When the local catholic school rebuilt one of the buildings, that was all special fundraising. No university puts their capital expenditures on their general budget, either.
There isn’t enough money, period.
Note: the state of California I believe requires all of this stuff to be publicly available. PUSDs numbers are on the web. If Tom wants to see what his local private school spends, he can very likely get their entire budget by looking for it.
I think he might be surprised at how much is spent on the actual teachers.Report
The point is that capital expenditures are included in other states’ figures. We need to compare apples to apples. CA is playing hide the salami on the taxpayer.
Oh look, we just raise taxes [Prop 30] on “the rich.” again. for the children, again. Although it’s bullshit, again.
Oh, look–the taxes for the schools go to…the teachers’ pension funds! Who knew?
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/state-379061-tax-budget.html
Geezus Chrissmus, Pat. People like you are our last hope.Report
For those interested, here are the Census Bureau’s statistics on how much is being spent per-pupil. California spends about $9400 while Texas spends $8700. Revenue is counted differently, about $10,600 for each state. Not sure what the deal is with the differential between revenue and spending.Report
The article said some don’t. But capital expenditures and pensions seem to be off-budget. Clean numbers, por favor. This is the highest taxed state in the US andeducation gets a constitutionally mandated half or so of revenues.
Something’s up, brother, and there ain’t no more money. Something stinks and you need to get to the bottom of it.Report
Yes, it’s the figures you cited. They include capitol development — building schools — as part of the per-student costs.
That’s akin to assigning the entire R&D of a car company to a single line of cars.
Strange as this may seem, those schools will continue to be used by MORE than the current class of students and AFTER the loans have been paid off.
Only an idiot or a hack would calculate costs that way.Report
The other states you’re comparing ’em to calculate that way. Idiots and hacks indeed, as you say.
Where is the legendary suspicion of the government that the left is famous for? You’re out covering up for them.Report
Tom:
It’s not clear from the CATO source you cite that other states compute per-pupil costs including capital expenditures; it actually looks like the opposite, since they talk about other school districts in other states doing exactly that, excluding capital expenditures.
Part of this is undoubtedly driven by expediency – a principal at a public school probably don’t know enough about the capital expenditures at their school, nor about the depreciation factors involved. They report operational costs. The district accounts for capital costs different from operational costs.
I get your point; it would be helpful for everybody to know what the real numbers are, if for no other reason “the difference between what we spend per year on teaching and what we spend per year on keeping the heat going is important to note, from a planning perspective.” However, I can also see the flip side to that: if you actually go to the time and expense of calculating all the real costs of a particular school, people are going to compare that with the tuition cost at their local private school, and they’ll be comparing apples to oranges again (the wrong apples and oranges).
As to the “the money is going to pay the pensions, not the in-class costs of the school”, the pensions are legally obligated expenditures (as per current understanding, see Tim’s excellent posts on ex-post facto pension obligations). So if the state can’t allocate the funds to that without pulling money away from the schools, they have to do so. Prop 30 may go mostly towards funding the pensions, but it does so by plugging a hole in the general fund, which means there’s no need for additional cuts to in-class expenditures.
Look, I’m entirely sympathetic to the shell game accusation, and I’m entirely sympathetic to the problem with the pensions, and I agree that those are separate problems from properly funding the schools. 100% down with you, there.
But to properly fund the schools, for their operational costs, they need more money than what they’re getting now, out of the general fund (they’re not likely to get it, but that’s the reality on the ground). Pension reform is going to have to happen, sure.Report
Pensions are inextricable from the whole $$. It’s a shell game to pretend otherwise. We’re #1 in pension costs and near-last in $per-pupil advertised figures. Something’s not adding up.
Did you know when you voted for Prop 30 that it was the shell game, that the bleat about “the children” was a fiction? [Those who voted “no” sure did.]
As for the zillions in bonds we float, that’s an area I haven’t even got to. Because it won’t make a goddam bit of difference in our state, which has just gone off the cliff.
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2012/09/24/what-school-bonds-pay-for-from-san-diego-to-burlingame-the-crime-is-whats-legal/Report
Did you know when you voted for Prop 30 that it was the shell game, that the bleat about “the children” was a fiction? [Those who voted “no” sure did.]
Yes. The issue was, the solution to the problem wasn’t on the ballot. Plugging the dike for the next three years was.
I know, the flip side to that is that it encourages everyone to ignore the pension problem for another three years. I don’t fault you for voting “no” on it.
I honestly don’t know how to fix California’s problems, at this point, without a Constitutional Convention. We are just seriously screwed up. Breaking the state into two or three pieces seems the least suboptimal solution, and that says something, right there.
Some times, you really do need to take off and nuke the entire site from orbit, just to be sure.Report
From the Wall Street Journal-
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324712504578137291855163334.html
Apparently The Marketplace thinks California is doing better, especially since the moochers approved the higher taxes…
According to Mr. Donahue [managing director at research advisory firm Municipal Market Advisors] “California is “lucky Proposition 30 passed, because if it didn’t, we’d be having a different conversation right now.”
But I am sure Mr. Donahue is a communist or something.Report
The state stole the money from the localities. All that says is CA’s bonds were the pits and now are just lousy. As a whole, CA is still screwed.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/07/20/california-goes-bankrupt
And public-sector compensation is still at the root of it. It’s time for you Dems to stop fronting for them and start reforming. They’re killing us all.Report
Didn’t feel like stepping into this subthread about McShizzle whatever, but this:
“California has strong teacher unions if I’m not mistaken and performs not so well ”
Check out this LAUSD public school, with its awful unionized teachers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Camino_Real_High_School
Short story, this high school has long been a stellar performer, near the top nationally, all the while being part of LAUSD.
At the same time, some of the worst schools are also LAUSD;
Some of the worst schools are also private or charter schools.
In other words, using unions as a driver of poor performance in schools is nonsense. If you have a beef with unions, leave public schools out of it.Report
Also, Canada and Finland have the unions and kill us on test scores.
More unions equal better test scores.Report
Actually, this is more a factor of proximity to the North Pole.Report
What is the empirical case for the claim that
a.) Unions cause lower test scores or worse education
b.) A Nordic European level of government spending (or involvement more generally, a la a minimum wage, or rules on the selling of health insurance) on education, healthcare, unemployment insurance, and childcare causes lower quality of life or worse economic growth.
Cite the specific evidence yourself, please.Report
On unions, the argument is based on efficiency. I am not aware of anyone making a case that unions drive test scores down, though I would be open to reading it if anyone has a link. Our argument is that unions and government monopolies drive the price up. See my link at 3:12 today to Mr Harris for the Cato study.
Better yet is the killer of all studies on the effect of government monopolies vs competitive markets in education. The case is solid. Markets are the way to go for effective education…
http://www.cato.org/pubs/articles/coulson_comparing_public_private_market_schools_jsc.pdfReport
Roger, both of you airtight, slam dunk Cato papers are full of holes and simply not the effective arguments you would like them to be. I’ll be working up my complete rebuttal later this evening.Report
So, the problem of education that we are all discussing is that the U.S.has low test scores.
But unions do not contribute to that problem. So getting rid of unions, or using non-unionized labor in charter schools, will not improve education in the U.S.
Glad we got that problem out of the way.
I agree that killing unions will reduce teacher pay. But teachers love students, so they will provide the same value of work. So yes, killing unions would make education spending “more efficient.”
It would also drive more and more people out of the middle class, thus lowering overall spending and demand for consumer goods and service, thus harming the economy. And the damage to the social fabric as we kill the middle-class will be incalculably bad,
But that is what many of your policy preferences: killing private and public sector unions will do.Report
The data that tracks prosperity and economic freedom by country is here. In general, countries with less regulatory interference in markets get better scores, and better scores are strongly correlated with prosperity.
http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking?src=home
And here is a study for Sweden, showing that it has thrived when relatively free and choked up when regulation and taxation have become onerous.
http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/Sweden%20Paper-%20revised.pdfReport
The data that reveals the substantially higher standards of living in the US, the higher growth rate and the lower historic unemployment rate are here.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/123566Report
Thanks Mr H,
I’ve posted the study on free markets a half dozen times and everyone keeps promising to tear it apart, but nobody has followed through yet, I appreciate learning more about it from you.Report
Roger,
Regarding the Heritage (hacks all of them) economic freedom study. Wikipedia has this:
“Critics such as Jeffrey Sachs have contested the Index’s assumption that economic openness necessarily leads to better growth. In his book The End of Poverty, Sachs graphed countries’ ratings on the index against GDP per capita growth between 1995 and 2003, claiming to demonstrate no correlation between a country’s rating and its rate of economic growth. Sachs pointed out, as examples, that countries with good ratings such as Switzerland and Uruguay had sluggish economic performances, others, like China, with poorer rating had very strong economic growth.[19]
The UAE questioned the rating of their country’s economic freedom in 2008, comparing its middling rating with the high rating they had received from other indicators such as Transparency International and Moody’s. They also argued that the report is “unreliable”, because its methodology had changed twice in the last two years.[20]
Stefan Karlsson of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, challenged the usefulness of the index due to the fuzziness of many of the categories used to determine freedom.[21] John Miller roundly criticizes the “Index”, writing in Dollars & Sense, “In the hands of the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation, Washington’s foremost right-wing think tank, however, an economic freedom index merely measures corporate and entrepreneurial freedom from accountability. Upon examination, the index turns out to be a poor barometer of either freedom more broadly construed or of prosperity.”[22] According to Left Business Observer, the Index has only a 33% statistical correlation with a standard measure of economic growth, GDP per capita.[23]”
In brief, the measure is useless. It doesn’t measure economic growth. It doesn’t measure human well-being. It doesn’t measure happiness. It just measures a country’s level of (usually) corporate regualtion.
Singapore and Hong Kong come out well on this study, because they are weird cases: more cities than countries.
—-
We’ve been over the Swedish case. But it’s one data point. ademnark, Germany, France, Canada, the U.K. all do well by GDP measures (slightly less than the U.S.) but better by measures of quality of life and equality of opportunity.
There is very little reason evidence to suggest that U.S. GDP, economic strength is even partially caused by lack of a stronger social safety net, universal health care, more education subsidies, or lower taxes. Just none at all.Report
Shazbot,
Your same argument was made when we started making agriculture more efficient. And when we threatened the living wages of the home weavers. And then we went for the buggy whip manufacturers.
Economists realized that prosperity does not come from saving jobs or paying people high wages. It comes from being more efficient and productive. This leads to high living standards.Report
Also, here is what I would say about the Hoover paper (too bad that Noah Smith, actual economist, already said it):
“I see that Kip Hagopian and Lee Ohanian have written a lengthy article about inequality. It’s hard – no, impossible – for me to summarize the thesis of the piece, because it’s basically a huge smorgasbord of loosely related, unrelated, and even contradictory reasons why the United States government should not redistribute income…. There’s no thesis here, other than the idea that “income redistribution is bad.” I think this reduces the credibility of the authors. Hagopian and Ohanian clearly started from a policy conclusion (“income redistribution is bad”) and went in search of reasons why this might be true, then went in search of data that supported those reasons. That’s exactly the reverse of how I think scientists ought to do things. First you look at the data, then you make sense of it, and then you decide which policy makes the best sense. The fact that Hagopian and Ohanian seem to have done the reverse of this makes me think “Oh, here are another couple of guys who want lower taxes on the rich, and will grab hold of any theory or statistic that seems like it supports lower taxes on the rich.”
In brief, there isn’t an argument in the Ohanlian paper. There are some claims that may or may not be true, but no argument that shows that the inequality that I cited in the Lane Kenworthy paper in Foreig Affairs isn’t a massive problem in and that it can’t be solved by moving to a more European level of public education and public healthcare.
The study hasn’t gotten much attention precisely because it is such a mess, IMO.
Read the whole thing by Smith, it is fair enough:
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/flinging-spaghetti-at-inequality.html
—
This is quite good, too, and fair:
“The [apparent] implication [of the data in the Ohanian paper] is that income inequality reduction leads to absolute income reduction.
We see a similar divergence of opinion in interpreting the following map (showing income inequality per country). Max Fisher gives a negative impression: “[l]ooking for the other countries marked in purple gives you a quick sense of countries with comparable income inequality, and it’s an unflattering list.” Jason Brennan (to whom I owe the hat tip) presents the two alternative interpretations. The one attributed to the second group: “…inequality matters less than I thought.”
Does inequality matter? If you take a look at the above-linked map, you’ll notice (as Fisher points out, but poorly interprets) that the list of countries that “out-compete” the United States on income equality include: Russia, Morocco, Spain, Greece, Algeria, Italy, Tunisia, Egypt, China, India, etc. However, the average American lives a higher quality life, in terms of income, than the average citizen in these countries. To this extent, it seems inequality doesn’t matter. Yet, there are countries on the list with equally high living standards (or, even greater living standards): Sweden, Norway, Germany, Canada, et cetera. The map sends mixed signals.
What this suggests is that there is an alternative, third road: income inequality matters to some semi-ambiguous extent, but there is no obvious reason to emphasize this quality over others. Further, there are means of reducing income inequality that don’t lead to national poverty or State-heavy, stagnating markets. I’m going to continue to stress the role that the banking industry plays in creating income inequality, although I realize I’m a bit heterodox in holding this position. Reforming banks will go greater lengthens than increasing welfare, and at a much lesser cost — actually, with net benefits.”
http://www.economicthought.net/blog/?p=2478
I agree about the banking thing, IMO. But the stronger safety net is also necessary.Report
Roger, I don’t quite know what you’re referring to in the agriculture case. Efficiency is a good thing when it leads to us as a society spending less resources (time in labor, natural resources, land use, etc.) to get the same or greater level of overall production, e.g,more bread, more textbooks, more kids that can do math, more flying cars, etc.
But that likely won’t happen with paying teachers less while paying them the same amount. Sure, the government (state and local in this case) could cut teacher salaries to closer to minimum wage and spend the savings on tax relief. But the lower salaries of such a large group of workers will lead to lower spending, which will lower consumer demand, which will actually make the economy as a whole, less efficient.
It is true that there is a theoretical level of taxation and spending that could kill or slowdown the market, but it is not, say, Clinton era rates of tax and spending. Nor is there any reason to think that it Swedish or Danish levels. Those places do very well and we did better under Clintonian rates and levels of spending.
All the empirical evidence states that things like the GI bill, the union movement to establish manufacturing as a middle-class job, socialized medicine, free public education, social security, banking regulations, and similar government interventions make the market work better, indeed more efficiently, than it otherwise would.
I getReport
Shazbot
I am restarting the thread below for more room.Report
Related: Teachers union kills vouchers for poor kids. The mainstream news didn’t cover it, so appologies for the “unapproved” source.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/334568/judge-overturns-la-voucher-program-lindsey-m-burke
Report
Mr H,
We are still eagerly awaiting your feedback.Report
Tom,
Your unfortunately one-sided National Review article seems keen on overlooking the simple fact that Gov. Jindal has enacted a law that violates Louisiana’s state constitution. Also, the author conveniently fails to mention that there was a broad coalition of professional organizations (the La. Association of Educators and the La. School Boards Association) who were also named in the lawsuit along with the state teachers union. The fact that only 2% of those eligible actually applied for the vouchers tells you how excited these people are to use this program. There’s actually millions of tax dollars being spent by these schools to advertise their services. The Gov. and the State Board of Ed. will no-doubt appeal the lower court’s ruling so we’ll just have to wait and see how this plays out in La.’s racist Supreme Court.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/opinion/bayou-blues.html?_r=0
Folks, it’s a teacher’s union’s job to advocate for its members and yes, often that means fighting programs or laws attempting to minimize union strength such as is the case here. But, more to the point, let’s take a look at the schools that voucher recipients will get to “choose” from.
Of the 119 private schools to choose from, most are Christian schools that use a bible-based curriculum. Nearly 1 in 6 will push creationism as science. Mother Jones poured through the Bob Jones University Press textbooks many of these schools will use (your welcome).
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/01/us-education-vouchers-idUSL1E8H10AG20120601
For a complete explanation of the diverse and not-so-good choices available to those with vouchers check out this from Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/01/us-education-vouchers-idUSL1E8H10AG20120601
La.’s public schools are indeed a mess, and parents should demand and receive better options for their children, but what’s going on in La. is pretty shameless. And yet, it’s nice to know that the good folks at the National Review are doing the hard work of identifying the real villains in all this: those greedy, public school teachers and their big bad union.Report
Forgot Mother Jones link to above piece:
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/07/photos-evangelical-curricula-louisiana-tax-dollarsReport
Poor kids should thank the teachers union for killing their vouchers. Right. Lord, you can convince yourself of anything.Report
And Republicans can convince themselves that they care more about poor kids than they do about weakening unions and breaking the law.Report
Per JasonK’s post: The unions killed the kids’ vouchers out of charity. For their own good.
Uh huh.Report
Sorry Tom, been up and down these threads and I have no idea which post you’re referring to. Even went to Jason’s previous articles. Perhaps you can re-link it for me. Otherwise, you’re still avoiding my arguments and repeating your talking points.Report
You Democrats gotta get real and stop fronting for the public unions. They are our common enemy, and Rahm, Cuomo and Villiaragosa all see the writing on the wall.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/11/19/unions-vs-democratic-mayors
The Louisiana union’s concern was selfish in killing the vouchers for poor kids. That they did it for any public good is a laugh. And that’s how it relates to JasonK’s post[s].
As for trying to turn this back onto republicans, that’s the tried and true tactic, but it won’t wash. The teachers unions are sacrificing the good of the kids for their own power and they deserve the stinkeye. Attacking the other side is just a diversionary tactic.
Get real. These guys are killing us, both in looting the public treasury and blocking educational reform.Report
Tom, you keep wanting to make this about how evil public employee unions (or is it all unions?) are – probably becaue thats where you think your arguments are strongest. A for effort, for sure, but I’m really only concerned with what’s going on down in Louisiana and on that score your points are difficult to square. If you want to have a larger argument about the efficacy of voucher programs we can do that dance as well.
Bottom line, the private school options available to kids with vouchers in Louisiana are absolutely regressive, unaccountable, unconstitutional, and a recipe for further educational neglect. If this is your idea of “choice” or “freedom” or whatever other focus tested buzz word you want to use than you and I have entirely different definitions of how municipalities should conduct the business of public education in this country.
As a delegate for my large public middle school in Brooklyn, NY I get to see from the inside how the nation’s largest union operates. Sure, it isn’t always pretty. Sometimes the personalities and points of view are positively cringe-worthy. But as a democratic body comprised of hundreds of thousands of diverse members who make all major decisions with outstanding majorities of 80-90% vote in a parliamentary proceeding. During the clean-up of Super Storm Sandy I helped with the union’s effort to mobilize an army of teachers to visit places hardest hit. We spent days cleaning, shoveling, and delivering supplies. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent with my union brothers and sisters cold calling people to make sure they went out and voted on election days.
Does the union endorse certain candidates? Of course it does, that’s what politics is all about – picking the side you think will do the best job for all concerned. Are unions focussed on the interests of their members? Of course they are, that’s the point of the union. Public opinion blows with the wind, but as a professional I like to think I know a little more about what’s best for children and schools than they, or the politicians do.
Certainly the pension question is a real issue, but what you see accross the country are unions willing to negotiate settlements in the spirit of compromise. Don’t kid yourself, one side is more interested in negotiating, the other side is more interested in scoring political points.
Louisiana’s public school teachers and their allies stood up to a horrible policy decision and for that, they’re heroes.Report
But Tom, more to your point about the Democrats and the unions not getting along; actually makes me very happy. To the extent that any of the mayors you mentioned are or were progressives or pro union, show me the evidence.
It would probably be nice and easy to compartmentalize unions as this or that ideology/political affiliation, but that’s proving not to be the case. Rahmbo learned the hard way that swearing and offending may have worked in the White House, but it ain’t going to work in Chi Town.Report
True, Mr. Harris, I resist your changing the subject. The kids got screwed by the union’s selfishness, and they are no heroes.
And I’m hoping that there are genuine reformers in the Democratic Party [and there may be some]
http://reason.com/archives/2012/11/19/unions-vs-democratic-mayors
who will stand beside the Scott Walkers and start to straighten out this corrupt mess that has brought us to the brink of disaster.
But as a democratic body comprised of hundreds of thousands of diverse members who make all major decisions with outstanding majorities of 80-90% vote in a parliamentary proceeding
Such groupthink would be hilarious if it weren’t so creepy. In states like California and cities like Chicago, it’s up to the Democrats now to stop you. I hope they find the guts.Report
Yes indeed. Go Democrats and put a stop to the overwhelming and powerful forces marshaled by women named Ms. Rozenthal, she of the Dyker Heights Roenthals.
Put an end to the tyranny of middle aged straphangers with their sweater vests and their aged canvas satchels. Their power and influence is stronger than all the Walton’s, Kochs, Gates’, and Broads combined. Bring these poor wretches who couldn’t “do,” so they taught to their knees. Their pensions, mutually agreed upon with the elected powers at be who bare none of the political cost for making these deals in the first place, will surely throw this great nation into the darkest night. They must be stopped with extreme prejudice if necessary, there benefits extracted, and their rights of collective bargaining crushed before these thermos toting, coffee drinking fiends deliver our nations children into the deepest pits of hell.
Or… Maybe elected officials could work with the people tasked to do the job of educating children rather than demonizing their union and resorting to sky is falling claptrap just so they can get the credit for “turning the ship around.”Report
<blockquote?Their pensions, mutually agreed upon with the elected powers at be who bare none of the political cost for making these deals in the first place, will surely throw this great nation into the darkest night.
Sarcasm won’t mask the fact that public pensions [corruptly arrived at via Democrat self-dealing] are a grave threat to the nation’s economic stability.
Public unions taking over the Dem Party became self-dealing, which is corrupt. It’s going to take a lot of guts for Democrat leaders to undo this disaster, but the Dems sold us out, and in places like CA and Chi, are the only ones empowered to fix it.
Although in WI, the majority were willing to let GOP Gov. Scott Walker be the bad guy and do what’s needed to be done. Lucky us.Report
Your right Tom, Democrats and their unions are WAY more corrupt than Republican state legislators who’s generously taken it upon themselves to gerrymander the hell out of all the voting districts so that their Representatives can languish in an indefinite incumbent stupor. The Karl Rove strategy was brilliant and he deserves his due for this, but lets not pretend that one side is playing the game more or less fairly than the other.Report
“Check out this LAUSD public school”
Single example, anecdotes aren’t data, blah blah blah.Report
I double checked the date to see if this was opposites day. I still think this is a prank, but…
1) if we raise the price of something, we can expect to get less of it. Are you really sure you want fewer low skilled, entry level jobs?
2) if someone doesn’t think they can live off this wage, don’t you think they would do something else? Isn’t it possible that most of these people aren’t trying to live entirely off the wage?
3). If you raise the minimum wage, and someone can’t get a job because they are less qualified than the other applicants, why do you want to force them to not offer to do the job for less? Are you really sure you are helping them?
4) McDonalds is offering them a job. You are offering them nothing. Why are you requiring McDonalds to pay more? If it bothers you they dont make more, why don’t you offer to make up their salary to whatever pleases you? In other words, don’t you feel guilty about forcing others to live by your values?
5). This top down tinkering with the market is not helping recent employment trends. Minimum wages, mandatory licensing, mandatory full time employee benefits, government union wages and pensions, etc etc. If this keeps up we will soon have the standard of living and unemployment rates of Europe.
We have ( too rapidly) growing safety nets for the truly needy. We have low paying jobs for teens and people who need to supplement their income. We have the highest standard of living of anywhere in the history of the human race. We have class mobility that is as good as ever except in one area as covered in prior discussions.
The more we interfere with markets, the more we will raise unemployment and the less well off the poor and all of us will be. Obamacare is looking like it is going to be a major blow to the unskilled, let’s not double down on the damage that comes from economic illiteracy.Report
You wrote exactly what I predicted in my response Roger. I don’t know what to make of that actually.Report
And I anticipated this one from you when I wrote it. It is like you repeat what we say, but just don’t get it.Report
Because this is a case – one of many – where you theory doesn’t work.Report
Then why can’t you educate me on where the error is?
Show me where the economics reveals substantially raising prices on wages creates more demand for it? Show me how the unemployed are better off than the employed? Show me how the one offering a job is the bad guy? Show me where more top down master planning of markets improves prosperity vs the alternative of freer markets?
I am fine with Christopher or you boycotting whatever your conscience tells you to. But I can’t figure out why you think a substantial increase in mandatory wages is going to help anyone other than your conscience.Report
No, actually you are correct in some regards-
Yes, raising the price of something does lower the demand.
Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. Elastic/ inelastic demand and all that.
So we can show empirically in the fast food industry that raising wages such as by the minimum wage law incentivizes employers to find alternatives like automation such as computerized cash registers.
But- there are not infinite alternatives to paying higher wages. Automation can only take you so far.
As we have seen with most minimum wage jobs, while the higher price may restrict slightly the number of employees, the price is passed on to the consumers who ultimately pay for it. The demand for fast food has not been damaged by the minimum wage laws that anyone can tell. Meanwhile, the benefit of the minimum wage laws is that consumers pay slightly higher prices, and the employees are able to be productive consumers themselves.
And top-down master planning? Empirically we can show that it does improve prosperity, in some circumstances. When the government creates infrastructure such as road, it is normally with the intention of facilitating trade. Government can build roads faster, cheaper, and easier using the power of eminent domain and taxes. This is top-down planning, since it is government deciding which enterprises are to be favored with access, and where and under what conditions. When the government decides that investment income is different than earned income, and taxes it less, that is top-down planning intended to spur investment, not consumption.
What normally gets missed in these discussions is the concept of moderation and balance.
That there are limits to how much benefit we get from unfettered economic frreedom, and there are limits to how much benefit we get from top-down master planning.
Yes, there is a point at which a minimum wage can become an economic drag, just as there is a point at which creative destruction is no longer creative, but just destructive.Report
Good comment. LWA. I agree to a very large extent.
I support infrastructure improvements if done well, but am less of a fan of price/wage fixing. We can accomplish the result more efficiently with safety nets, IMO.
But, awesome comment, bro’.Report
Roger, I like you, so I’ll reply to what you wrote one passage at a time, although concisely:
“I double checked the date to see if this was opposites day. I still think this is a prank, but…”
It’s not opposite day. That’s 12/12/12. I think you’ll probably strongly disagree with what I write on that day.
“1) if we raise the price of something, we can expect to get less of it. Are you really sure you want fewer low skilled, entry level jobs?”
I support technology, so yes, essentially.
“2) if someone doesn’t think they can live off this wage, don’t you think they would do something else? Isn’t it possible that most of these people aren’t trying to live entirely off the wage?”
I imagine they would do something else if they could, but, as a well-educated, well-qualified someone who spent six months searching for a part-time job full-time until he finally found one, plus a year and a half searching for a full-time job full-time (see several of my past posts), and who now, for the last three weeks (future post) has one, I would strongly say no – that even if you are well educated, qualified, and articulate, as I like to believe I am, you will have difficulty finding a job; you might even struggle getting employment at a fast food restaurant due to the absurd shittyness infecting our labor market.
Four months into my job search, I would have considered myself lucky to have been able to work at a fast food restaurant. Unfortunately, the several I submitted applications to never contacted me. I can only assume they weren’t looking for anyone.
“3). If you raise the minimum wage, and someone can’t get a job because they are less qualified than the other applicants, why do you want to force them to not offer to do the job for less? Are you really sure you are helping them?”
I don’t really understand what you mean here. Could you elaborate?
“4) McDonalds is offering them a job. You are offering them nothing. Why are you requiring McDonalds to pay more? If it bothers you they dont make more, why don’t you offer to make up their salary to whatever pleases you? In other words, don’t you feel guilty about forcing others to live by your values?”
No, I don’t feel guilty. Rather, I would refuse to eat at McDonald’s if I weren’t already doing so for common sense reasons. I think increased consumer consciousness/shunning in extreme cases is a good model for a libertarian. Regarding your insinuation that, if I believe the government should force everyone to pay for the defectors/downtrodden to have a living wage, then why don’t I make up the difference myself, I assure you that I have tried the best I could with my time over the past year and a half. Even though I could not find a full-time paying job until recently, I spent approximately six hours a week volunteering in healthcare for homeless individuals; although I admit that I would not have done that if I had actually been able to – despite constant efforts – find a job, since my own family was living well below the poverty level at the time. Nor do I believe that anyone should be compelled to subsidize laziness. Rather, I believe that it is in the interest of society to subsidize the temporary downtroddeness of individuals, and empiricism vindicates me: just look at the successes of microfinance. And, as someone who personally depended on the welfare state for some time, if I ever achieve a position whereby I am able to impact society for the better, that also vindicates the welfare state.
“5). This top down tinkering with the market is not helping recent employment trends. Minimum wages, mandatory licensing, mandatory full time employee benefits, government union wages and pensions, etc etc. If this keeps up we will soon have the standard of living and unemployment rates of Europe.”
This seems like politically-motivated witchdoctory to me. Who and who isn’t blinded in the experiments you reference, and/or what is your deductive reasoning process that allowed such conclusions, and/or what are your X^2/p values in asserting that?
As an aside, what’s wrong with the standard of living in Europe? The last time I checked, a majority of EU countries had objectively better health care systems that we do, and certainly living in the cradle of Western Civilization can’t be all that bad? The food must be good at least!
“We have ( too rapidly) growing safety nets for the truly needy. We have low paying jobs for teens and people who need to supplement their income. We have the highest standard of living of anywhere in the history of the human race. We have class mobility that is as good as ever except in one area as covered in prior discussions.”
I’m not saying things are bad; but they could be better. Much better, I think.
“The more we interfere with markets, the more we will raise unemployment and the less well off the poor and all of us will be. Obamacare is looking like it is going to be a major blow to the unskilled, let’s not double down on the damage that comes from economic illiteracy.”
Well sir, I agree that markets should be preserved wherever outcomes coincide with our values. (And in general, as a libertarian, I strongly support markets.) But I will assert that human values ultimately govern everything. (That is, actually, the founding principle behind the blog I was involved in before I came here.) I’m still waiting for you to provide some sort of logic/empiricism/rationalization for your assertion that Obamacare – i.e. providing for poor people’s medical needs – will somehow hurt those same poor people. Should we instead opt to let them die health-care-less? Or should we continue our present system of treating them out of ethical obligation and then just eating the cost? Which do you prefer? Or are you suggesting that trickle-down (for which there is little empirical evidence in our present system) is enough to eclipse an immediate lack in the necessities for human existence? Because personally, I’d rather have health care than slightly cheaper shampoo at Walmart.Report
Chris, you don’t like BJOzBizzle? What is the difference between a bleeding heart liberal and a libertarian?Report
Mike, is this you again?Report
Libertarians have a better understanding of economics.Report
Heh. Does anyone really understand economics, driven as it is by thousands of disparate forces and irrational actors?
I’d argue the Libertarian view is necessary but by no means complete. To its credit, the Libertarian view does push back against well-meant regulatory idiocy (always the most dangerous kind) but it hasn’t quite come to terms with the consequences of what it’s asking for in terms of equally idiotic and equally well-meant deregulation. There is a happy medium somewhere along that sum of vectors.Report
I’ll agree with that BlaiseP.Report
Good morning Chris,
You admit the demand for entry level employees at the current allowable wage is pathetic and back up the claim with personal data. You seemingly acknowledge that raising the minimum wage will further reduce demand, but you are asking for it anyways. I read this as saying lets go ahead and make a bad thing worse.
By point 3) I meant that I fail to understand how it helps someone to be not offered a job. Specifically it hurts the least skilled the most. Again, your recommendation is to make a bad thing worse.
I already agreed with you last night on the freedom to boycott whomever you want to, though I see it as an act of good intentions and bad secondary results. I am also a strong fan of an effective safety net including medical care. I believe the safety net did what it was intended to do in your case, and should continue to be used in this way rather than having low skilled jobs eliminated.
On point 5) you accuse me of witchdoctory for making the case that artificially raising wages will result in higher unemployment, and lead to a lower overall standard of living. I am unaware of any economic controversy in these claims. Indeedthrough kind of almost agreed above. What are you suggesting the minimum wage and maximum benefits be?
The problem with Europe is that unemployment is as expected higher. Growth lower. Standard of living is substantially lower, outrageously so.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/123566Report
Roger, this piece isn’t about the minimum wage, which I’m more or less against (earlier post) for the reasons you stipulate. I do, however, support a minimal income. Clearly what I’m advocating here is public support for fast food unionization – at least in New York City, and the recognition that unions and markets are not antithetical.Report
So mich to disagree with. Mostly the idea that a larger welfare state is bad for quality of life or unemployment is just completely unsubstantiated. (The reverese might be substantiated.)
Look at quality of life metrics for places with a stronger safety need and more generous help for the poor and working class: Sweden, Denmark, Canada, France, U.K., Germany, Australia, etc.
Their unemployment rates on average are either slightly better or slightly worse than the U.S., a bit better now.
While quality if life surveys consistently rank most of these countries above the U.S., if you put stock in object measures of quality of life.
You’re trying to blame the welfare state in Greece or Italy for their current woes and that is just factually wrong. All of their problems are due to the failures of the Euro as a currency project.Report
Also, Spain.Report
I’ve previously provided the data on historical unemployment, standard of living, and long term growth rates.
I guess current European unemployment could be better today than in the US, but could you link me to the data so I can add it to my files?
I am not really interested in quality of life surveys, but I would love to see per capita spending comparisons on the poor. I just looked at education per capita and we were the highest spenders. Do you have the other data?Report
There’s a difference between organizing a shop and organizing an industry.
From what I’ve seen, unions tend to work best when they maintain some manner of certification program for their members. The hall then operates as the HR dept. But the skills have to be portable from one company to the next.
In this model, a worker would be able to go from Wendy’s to McD’s to BK and perform at near-optimal level with very little or no training; and they would likely make that circuit as the need for manpower fluctuates among the signatories.
There are other issues which are legitimate issues in unionization, but I haven’t seen them touched on yet.
The big one is that a union doesn’t make it harder for a worker to be fired, but changes the rules for doing so. The pieces on the gameboard start out in a different position; that’s all.Report
Can you explain the details of this game board as Mr. Cahalan will be wanting empirical evidence?Report
To some extent.
The power of firing people (or lay-offs, which is much more common) is transferred to another person, who is often in control of, or has undue influence in, the grievance process.
It invites personality & internal politics to come to the forefront.
“Lack of production” and “insubordination” are two of the biggest causes for firing.
A lay-off would typically be “reduction in manpower,” which may actually be real or perceived above causes in nicer wording.
I’ve been fired myself for having a camera pass issued to me by security, which was the sole issuing authority for camera passes.
I see nepotism & discrimination regularly.
I myself am subject to a great deal of discrimination from members of my own union, because 1) I was organized in, and 2) my “home local” is in another state.
If you’re in a situation where your superintendent is your steward as well, you’re not going to have much representation in the grievance process.
If the business agent has a choice between a local hand and a traveler in a grievance hearing, the traveler doesn’t stand a hope.
There’s just as much, if not more, opportunities for under-handedness, but all manner of recourse is foreclosed.Report
Will H.,
I’ll answer your post by not addressing specifically your very good points, but going off on a tangent that might help refine what you say (in other words, I’m going to basically do my own thing while claiming that I’m addressing your comment):
I think the why’s and wherefore’s, in’s and out’s of unionizing depend on the shop and the industry. What is true from your experience and observations might be very different in a fast food industry (unless of course your experience is with union shops in fast food restaurants, in which case my point is vitiated!). The union certification program, and the union-hall employment program seems to work best in trades that require a lot of formally acquired skills. My father, a journeyman electrician and member of IBEW, had and as far as I can tell, benefited from that type of an arrangement. (The counterexample might be longshoremen unions. That is a very skilled job, but to my knowledge it doesn’t require the same formal apprenticeship system that electricians had to undergo when my father entered the work force. Yet their west coast union seems to have adopted the union hall technique.)
Organizing the fast food industry–with a union card for transferring employment–might not work, or at least if it were imposed might be something I would not endorse because of what I would perceive to be its effect in foreclosing employment to people not already in the union. (Such is one problem or cost with union shops generally, of course.)
I guess I’m thinking out loud, and having written what I’ve just written, I’m not sure I’m making much of a point or even saying what I thought I would at the outset. Still, I’m going to click “submit.”Report
Just a few observations:
As far as the IBEW goes, their training program has gone to where the apprentices receive a bachelor’s degree at completion, from what I understand.
Our guys get an associates in applied sciences.
My own specialty is something of a blend of mechanical/electrical engineering. I didn’t get a degree because that was before my time, and I was organized in. I did my college on my own time; first through academic classes at a community college, then through vocational classes at a different school.
Yes, I understand what you mean about shutting people out of employment, and with fast food, the high school kids in particular would take a hit.
Still, I could see the need for training & certification in sanitizing equipment and the like, blood-borne pathogens, etc. that would be portable as universal within the industry.
I’m not sure about the longshoremens’ apprenticeship, but my own union now has a heavy rigging cert that is required for much more than what it’s actually needed for. That’s the bad part about certs.
For example, an 8000 lb choker will hold 4000 at a 45 degree angle. Of course, three of them at that angle will hold 12,000 lbs.
Still, I see some things, stupid mistakes, going on with rigging from people that really ought to know better.Report
Thanks for your answer. I should say that my father would have entered the workforce in the early 1950s (he was born in 1932), and I suppose that was before the BA-and-a-handshake system that appears to have developed since then. In fact, my brother, who is also a journeyman electrician (and was born, if I recall correctly, around 1960), also didn’t get a BA (in the early 1980s). I imagine that by that time, the industry was probably already experimenting with the BA system you describe. (Other than the personal information on birthdates of my family members, the rest of this is mostly speculation on my part….I don’t know many of the facts.)
As for this, “Still, I could see the need for training & certification in sanitizing equipment and the like,”
You’re probably right, but I’ll point out that one place I worked at* required me to get a “health training certification” (that wasn’t the real name), which in practice seemed to operate as a kind of $5 tax. I went to some government office (in downtown Denver), and took a “test” about food safety. For the “test,” I was allowed a cheat sheet in a language of my choosing (Spanish or English), with all the answers on it, and the answers on it were obvious anyway to anyone who has ever heard of the germ theory of disease. In addition to being what was to me a very transparent way to charge workers $5 to the government for the privilege of working, all the test really did was to verify a minimum level of literacy. (And I wouldn’t even be surprised if they had special provisions to help people who couldn’t read, provided they pay the $5, of course.) This was in 1998, so things might have changed since then.
* It was a bagel shop, which was probably a step up from Mc-fast-food. For the sake of simplicity and not to identify the company, I’ll call it “Enrio Fermi’s Bagels.”Report
Blood-borne pathogens was one of the modules covered in my OSHA-10 training; one of the few I thought would be applicable to fast food workers.
The awarding of degrees is something that just came in around the last 10 to 15 years or so.
There have been a number of changes for the better over the last 50 years.
One of them is the dobie system. A “dobie” was a fee that a worker was charged for being on a job. It was typically collected weekly by the steward, and sometimes arbitrarily determined. That has been replaced by “working dues.” I pay monthly dues to my “home local” (currently $34/mo.) and then working dues to the jurisdiction that I’m in of up to 3% of the gross. A lot of places have mandatory “donations” that are taken out of the check; 50¢/hr for the apprenticeship fund, or a percentage for a “target fund,” which goes to make low-cost loans for the contractors to off-set the price of union labor. Those are the more common ones.Report
Good post. I’m not sure I agree with your explanation for why fast food workers are seeking to organize now rather than in the past.
My theories, with nothing really to back them up:
A) Immigration enforcement, or the fear of it. There are fewer undocumented workers doing these jobs because 1) fewer are immigrating, 2) more are being deported and 3) fewer companies are willing to hire them.
B) The various protest movements we’ve seen over the last few years, the Tea Parties, Occupy Wall Street. Organizing is in in a way it hasn’t been in decades.
C) Food TV. I know for me personally, my views on the restaurant business has changed completely from watching Gordon Ramsey on Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen. I now recognize that running a crappy restaurant is a choice.
Rather than choose to sell quality food, these fast food joints chose to go for the “ubiquitous, cheap, and gross” model. I mean, yes, these companies have proven you can make money by selling an inferior product and paying low wages to the workers .
But that ain’t the only way to do it, man….
If the threat of a unionized workforce makes them rethink their business model, good for us!Report
That’s definitely one reason why I’m excited about this.Report
Can’t believe no one has commented on the post pic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCKdtBWT0Bs&feature=youtube_gdata_playerReport
When it comes to unionization or raising the minimum wage, the libertarian argument often sounds like this to non-libertarians like me:
But that’s not really the libertarian argument, or at least it’s not what most libertarians seem to argue. Instead, they might point out that minimum wages price some workers out of the labor market and raise prices to consumer, and that unions–or more accurately, compulsory union membership, buttressed by state-tolerated “union shop” rules–operate in a way that restricts the number of jobs available and also raises prices to consumers.
Now, here is is perhaps an ad hominem I might have avoided making but that I’ll make anyway: I sometimes find disingenuous the angst-ridden concern for the one employee priced out at the margin by minimum wages and unions over the ten (or twenty, or one hundred) who are (arguably, at least sometimes) helped by them.
That ad hominem aside, I suggest that liberal(ish) people like me ignore the libertarian arguments at our peril. I support the notion of fast food workers unionizing. I support it in spite of the probably deleterious effects that some libertarians have pointed out. I have many misgivings about unions and the way unions operate in the post-NLRA/post-Taft-Hartley U.S. But to me, perhaps because I worked in the industry for about five years (and I realize my experiences are probably not unique and that one could have very similar experiences to mine and derive from them different conclusions), I’m much more inclined to endorse unionization among fast food workers before I am inclined to endorse it among other workers.
Of course, the rent-seeker, as always, is in the details. I reserve the privilege to stand by my stated preference and yet not endorse a particular fast-food unionizing drive if it’s found out that the union in question allocates all the money it makes from dues to support boiling babies for fun or some other nefarious activity. I also might qualify my preference if a successful unionizing drive creates insurmountable barriers to entry for competitors to the big three (McD’s, Wendy’s, BK).Report
I couldn’t agree more on your point number one. It is utterly unconscionable that we allow any employer to pay such incredibly low, totally unlivable wages. $11K & change is impossible to live any kind of decent life on.
Frankly — based on no small amount of experience & observation — I think it’s just about impossible to live a decent, dignified life on anything less than about $100K a year, so I strongly support making that the absolute, bare minimum wage. It’s just beyond ridiculous that we continue to let employers exploit our vulnerable population by forcing them into punitively underpaid work. Make the employers play fair, I say. A decent, upper-middle-class quality of life should be a right provided to all not some rarified privilege accorded only to a tiny elite.Report
Frankly — based on no small amount of experience & observation — I think it’s just about impossible to live a decent, dignified life on anything less than about $100K a year
Is there an extra zero in there? That would make it too low, but on the other hand $100K seems much too high. I’d say a single person can live reasonably well on $25,000/yr, although probably not in Manhattan.Report
No, $100,000. While it may be possible to scrape by on $25,000, why should we — as the richest society ever on the face of the planet — settle for merely establishing some barely adequate living standard for our neediest citizens?
If we make the minimum $100,000/yr we ensure a much better quality of life for everyone. Just think of increase in living standards obtained by increasing these obviously exploited fast food workers’ annual income by 10 times. And then add to that the enormous new opportunities available to everyone in this country who currently makes less than $100,000/yr once they get their new raise up to the newly deemed acceptable minimum.
And all of that’s not even to consider the enormous boost to our economy generated by all that extra spending power. Basic humanity & basic economics would both seem to suggest that increasing the minimum income to something like $100,000/yr is the moral & practical thing to do. It’s only our society’s unjust resistance to the idea of putting any limits on the unquenchable greed of corporations & other employers that keeps us from taking a necessary & salutary step like that.Report
And just think about the killing that the people who produce wheelbarrows would make!Report
No, $100,000. While it may be possible to scrape by on $25,000, why should we — as the richest society ever on the face of the planet — settle for merely establishing some barely adequate living standard for our neediest citizens?
It’s not ‘barely adequate’. I’ve lived on it happily (and added to my savings while doing so), though I wouldn’t have liked to try living on much less.
If we could achieve a society where everyone in the US (or in my case, Canada) made at least $25,000 – which would involve substantially raising the incomes of over 20% of the population – and where there was a substantial degree of social mobility above that amount, then I’d think we had a quite good society, and my primary focus would be, even more so than it is currently, on how the living standards of the rest of the world can be increased.
But I’m very much in support of the idea that far too much of the money is held by super-rich oligarchs who make no contribution to society of remotely corresponding value, and that that money should be applied to relieving want. The existence of great wealth alongside great poverty is immoral.Report
I think the $100k number is probably a safer bet, especially considering the costs today of hookers and blow.
Hat tip to JHReport
Don’t forget the yachts!Report
I forgot the yachts!Report
The funny thing about that conversation with Hanley, btw, is that my point is that the extent of welfare programs ought to be pragmatically rather than principle-ly determined. And Hanley ended up agreeing with that!Report
He never disagreed about that point. The argument was because he kept asking you to draw a line, and you kept refusing.Report
If it’s pragmatics, the line can only be pragmatically determined, yes? But as systems change, pragmatically drawn conclusions will change as well, yes? That was my point.
Where would I draw the line right now, in the US, with things as they are? We’d have to get into specifics, of course, but HBY would be excluded. I said as much on that thread.
But why wasn’t that answer good enough for Hanley? Because he wanted me to articulate a principled limit beyond which welfare benefits could not go. But even he doesn’t have a principled limit for those things. The limits he accepts are determined by pragmatics. So … why challenge the liberal to provide a principled limit when you already accept that there isn’t one?
Hell if I know.Report
Exactly. I was frustrated watching your exchange with JH for the same reason.
Let me give an example. Much has been made of some supposed program to provide free cell phones to po’ folks. Well is that really so dumb?
If you fill out an application for employment they’re going to want a phone number. For all intents and purposes, it’s a pre-condition for gainful employment. And when they call it, they don’t want to get your mother or your girlfriend or your neighbor, they want to get you. Basic cell phones with a minimal voice plan are dirt cheap. Not an iPhone but the kind of things you get your 80-year old mother who doesn’t understand tech.
It’s also a vital safety safety device enabling you to summon 911 emergency services from anywhere you get a signal. Considering the real costs and benefits, this doesn’t seem like such a half-baked idea in 2012.Report
I was frustrated watching your exchange … for the same reason.
Man, I wish to heck you’da jumped into that thread with some clarity. I felt like no matter how many ways I tried to make the point, no one was getting it. And it’s such a small point!
And I agree that cell phones are a good example of a welfare bennie that can be justified pragmatically today, but which would have been viewed as a luxury item only a few years ago.Report
I’ve helped a couple of people get one dollar phones. They were people living in temporary shelters. Try giving a shelter number to job and see if you ever get a call back. Or tell them you’ll be at this shelter for 2 more weeks then maybe this other shelter or staying with a friend. You will never get a call back. Cheap cell phone are a simple and brilliant idea to help many people get on their own feet.Report
My pragmatic answer on cell phones is that if you would choose to enter and pay for a social safety net that includes cell phones if certain conditions are met that you should be free to do so with other like minded individuals. I am OK with the same deal on hookers and blow, BTW.
I do not like forcing someone to pay for phones, hookers or blow against their will. To clarify though they can “contractually” agree to pay for it on certain conditions and receive it in others.Report
I do not like forcing someone to pay for phones, hookers or blow against their will.
That can’t be the standard you really hold, tho, can it? If a single person refuses to pay for X, then government can’t compel people to pay for X? That’s not how policy works, of course, or how it’s justified.
I get the idea that we ought to minimize coercion and all that, but to sorta repeat what I wrote earlier, the policy you currently adopt regarding Walmart and fast food employees is the status quo, which amounts to a coercive use of government to subsidize cheap retail prices. It seems to me the only way that policy would be via a utilitarian calculus. But if utilitarian or other consequentialist “best outcome” type arguments work in that scenario, then coercion is justified whenever a “best outcome” can be achieved.
In other words, you’re placing a value (in this case, efficiency and cheap retail prices) above coercion in your calculus.
I don’t have have a problem with that, I should add. Government coercion must meet at least a minimal burden of justification, and in the case of tax revenues being used to subsidize cheap retail prices (via the social safety nets) as well as corporate profits (let’s not forget that part of the equation!) it very well might be. At least, you seem to think it is. But the point I want to make here is that in this case, pragmatic arguments based on values (not necessarily rights) are enough to justify violating the non-coercion principle. If so, then the non-coercion principle isn’t really a principle, is it? It’s just one of many factors we consider when formulating policies leading to best outcomes?Report
SW,
The answer to your riddle is that I want government to be as minimal as practical and as optional as possible with free entry and exit options to minimize such coercion. I do realize that real world gains should be incremental and experimental in this direction.
On Walmart, I view this as a wacky unintended side effect of heavy handed government regulation. The root cause which I go back to trying to eliminate is excessive government interference in the market. I am pretty sure Christopher’s minimum wage will just lead to more pernicious side effects and the need for even more meddling. It self amplifies.
The non coercion principle is a pragmatic one. To be honest, I know of nothing in the fundamental warp and woof of the universe which elevates non coercion to a special status. Same for liberty and freedom. The only reason I am a fan of liberty and an opponent of coercion is that the former tends to lead to value in the eyes of the action taker, and the latter tends to create win/lose, value destroying actions that harm third parties and encourage third parties to ham back. Coercion leads to a bad dynamic, freedom to a good dynamic. The “sweet spot” is freedom, but never up to the point of coercion, harm or deception.
Yes, if coercion consistently led to a great outcome for all, I would be a fan of coercion. Who wouldn’t? As an example, I approve of coercion as a last resort to discourage coercion. Used in this way, I think coercion leads to good.
The one caveat is that sometimes, it is best to TREAT some values as sacrosanct as opposed to pragmatic. I do not believe they are actually sacrosanct, but I believe they are best treated and embraced as sacrosanct.Report
C’mon. This non-coercion business is getting tiresome. You’re starting to sound like some street preacher preaching a Hell Fire Sermon. Yeah. It really is that tiresome. Lay off that line of argument. You have to convince me you understand how capitalism actually works and how those forces might be harnessed to the betterment of the low guy on the totem pole. So far, you’ve done a miserable job of it.Report
Fair enough, Roger. I think you’re missing something important here, tho.Report
SW,
Such as…Report
Blaise,
My interpretation of your comment is pretty much summarized as
“Blaise believes you are a pathetic idiot.”
Please let me know if I missed anything essential. As always, your feedback is appreciated.Report
Where the line is should be a question for our legislature to decide by democratic process, except that Republicans keep refusing to play the game and instead engage mostly in obstructionist stunts.Report
I guess no one here is familiar with this blighter character, who used to post similar satirical pieces on Megan McArdle’s blog. Oh joy, now it’s here. These comments are supposed to be caricatures of how liberals think, though they’re interesting only in what they tell us about how certain conservatives view liberals. And by interesting I mean boring. I’d suggest ignoring it, but it probably won’t go away anyway.Report
Yeah, my first throught was “obvious troll is obvious”.Report
If my idea is so obviously stupid perhaps you could use your words to actually, you know, make an argument as to why instead of just casting aspersions & calling names.
It seems to me that if it’s a good idea to guarantee everyone a 25,000/yr income regardless of ability or willingness to contribute to society then there is no good reason to half-ass it trying to figure out the right line of livable versus obviously-exploited and try to straddle or barely cross it w/ our aid to the less fortunate, rather we should go whole-hog and guarantee not just a barely-adequate livable wage but an income that allows for a high-quality life w/out trying to scrimp & save, etc.
Contrariwise if it’s self-evidently clear that guaranteeing everyone a $100,000/yr income is stupid & wrong then it’s probably just as stupid & wrong to guarantee them a $25,000/yr income, just apparently less obviously so judging by the ready support that idea attracts.Report
Because the problem with slippery slope arguments is that if it is correct in one instance, it becomes correct in all instances.
On the other hand, if your reductio ad absurdem argument against guaranteed income is valid, why not just exterminate the poor and be done with it?Report
Your argument ignores positive externalities of making sure everyone has a living wage such as sharply reduced crime rates (i.e – lower police costs) and public health improvements.Report
I was suspecting it was satire, but wasn’t quite sure.Report
I kinda always had a soft spot for Blighter.
I’m one of those “a sense of humor gets you a little more than halfway” guys, though.Report
These folks have no valuable skills so I am baffled why the think they should be paid more. Don’t like the pay, then get a better job or get better skills.Report
Yeah, why don’t all all join up and start a gigantic hedge fund, so they’d deserve government money.Report
Mike
If they think they are qualified to start one and can find investors, they should do it. But who is going to invest money with a bunch of uneducated burger jockeys? Would you invest your money with such folks or are you just mouthing? Once again lack of education and skills holds folks back, though these folks demand more money.Report
sigh.Report
I support unionization of fast-food workers. Everyone should be able to make a living wage, and collective bargaining is a basic right which no business should be able to deny if the majority of workers want it. It shouldn’t be unaffordable – the fast food industry has huge profits, so if the CEOs and shareholders have to accept slightly lower profit margin in order to pay workers more while keeping the food at prices where people will keep buying it, they can do that. It’s not going to bankrupt McDonald’s.
There are jobs where large wage increases are going to have businesses looking for ways to replace employees (I’ve noticed the rise of automated checkout at grocery stores over the last several years), but you can’t completely automate fast food. And there’s no point in a job that won’t enable people working it to make the bare minimum of living expenses.Report
You can certainly automate fast food. Heck, you can automate *pizza*.
McDonalds cooks mostly by microwave. A very basic shelf-stacking system plus a couple conveyor belts will handle that. And most places require patrons to get their own drinks now.Report
It’s going to get to the point soon where places will start requesting that you spit in your own food.Report
Robert Reich says most low-wage workers are employed by large corporations that have been enjoying healthy profits. Three-quarters of these employers (the fifty biggest employers of low-wage workers) are raking in higher revenues now than they did before the recession.
Which suggests that a trend in redistributing money is from the poor to those wealthy enough to own stocks in these companies, and from future taxpayers, because the social safety net provides a subsidy for these workers based on deficit spending.
There’s also another thing to consider as low-wage workers try to organize: the same hours-limits they face when it comes to health insurance also burdens them when it comes to unemployment insurance. If they’re fired for attempting to organize, they’re without income at all.Report
Zic,
Do you think corporate profitability is due to lack of reinvestment in turbulent times, crony capitalism kickbacks, or worker exploitation?Report
In WalMart’s case —
1) reinvestment — the company’s growing, still building new stores in the US and expanding in to other markets around the world.
2) Crony capitalism kickbacks — have you ever watched WalMart move in to a new community? You’re choices are pretty limited, and don’t actually reflect the real world, so how WalMart relates to the community goes here.
There’s a tremendous sales pitch about the jobs, the added value they’ll bring; a great build up about the increase in the tax base. This isn’t cronyism/kickbacks/corruption, it’s a full-bored and perfectly legal sales pitch aimed at the decision makers within a town. We’re at the planning process, that part of government that people really should pay more attention to.
For some places, the things WalMart’s selling pre-build actually hold true; there are more jobs, more choice. But for many other places, the store draws customers from traditional service centers, and ends up damaging the tax base and costing overall net jobs; it helps create ghost towns. I’ve talked to people who measure WalMart’s impact by measuring how an area’s pull factor,changes over time. A WalMart near an existing mall can, if the mall had a small pull factor, put it out of business.
3) Worker exploitation — is a huge problem with Wal-mart; it’s business plan is designed to exploit both workers and the social safety net. It’s a leech. Just so you know, Roger, I’ve done a bit of job creating, from the investment end. If someone walked up to me with a business plan that was based on a workforce dependent on the social safety net in this way, I’d laugh at them. Because when the public catches on that they’re being scammed, they get to change the regulations, and your whole business plan falls apart.
I realize you’d probably say this is a problem because we offer social safety nets for WalMarty to exploit; that food stamps keep and Medicaid muck with the labor market. Which totally avoids the responsibility WalMart has to act as an ethical employer. Just because something’s not against the law doesn’t mean it’s ethical; and WalMart’s a pretty good example of why regulation’s necessary to protect markets, because big players who can throw their weight around will find loopholes and weaknesses to exploit, and you have to then figure out how to re-level the playing field.
Free markets require a good Zamboni.Report
Hi Zic,
I totally agree that the effect of a Walmart should be short term to either eliminate jobs or increase output per job. The exact effect by community can differ between these two poles, but that is exactly what is supposed to happen short term when a more efficient operator enters the market. Long term, the displaced workers are expected to do something else. If we try to stop this creative destruction, we dismantle the engine of prosperity. If we build safety nets for it, we can get the best of both worlds.
If I offered someone getting government aid a minimum wage job I would not be a leach or be doing anything unethical. I would be offering a chance for mutual benefit to someone. Do you really want me to take the high ground and say “I would have hired you, but my conscience insists that I not do so because you get aid. Indeed I will only hire people that don’t get aid.” ??Report
If I offered someone getting government aid a minimum wage job I would not be a leach or be doing anything unethical. I would be offering a chance for mutual benefit to someone.
If you’re one of the riches people in the world, yes, you would be a leech.Report
Joe’s willing to cut my lawn for $10. Karl is willing to do it for $8.
So fish Karl, I should favor Joe?Report
Joe and Karl are not WalMart; they’re individuals.
WalMart is not an individual, despite what Mitt Romney and the Supreme Court have to say about it.Report
So corporations have a higher moral burden, even though they are not moral agents (have no capacity for moral thought/feeling)?Report
Corporations, by actively seeking out sociopathic CEOs, show remarkable capacity for immoral thoughts and feelings.
Emergent behavior, naturally.
But maybe we could rig a better system?Report
Kim
Maybe you could prove that corporations seek out those kind CEOs before you say silly things.Report
There are a few demonstrably sociopathic CEOs. I’m not going as far as Kim in saying they actively seek such crazies out but this from Forbes bears looking at in this context.Report
Scott,
“Death by Spreadsheet” ring any bells?
Don’t take my word for it — take Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s own internal memo’s (and don’t even bother listening to Moore).
I can mention the Kochs as well, if you’d like — my friend who’s worked for those devils can vouch for their moral rectitude.Report
I think if you actively paid a local poor person a wage so low that they could barely live just to wipe your ass while you spit on them and curse at them, even though you could easily afford to pay them a living wage, then your action is immoral.
I am not sure that it should be illegal at the individual level (for all sorts of practical reasons, it would be difficult and not very productive to regulate such small transactions amongst individuals), but it should be illegal to do it if you are doing it en mass. This is why I believe you should not be allowed to set up and run a sweatshop. (mmmm…. candy. Oh wait sweet shops aren’t sweatshops.)Report
A WalMart near an existing mall can, if the mall had a small pull factor, put it out of business.
Good for Wal Mart, then. Outcompeting other firms is the name of the game, and is what brings the consumer the best outcome. Protecting existing businesses is foolish–there’s no first in time, first in right to prosperity rule.
If the argument is that it’s not a level playing field because Wal Mart gets special deals from municipal decision-makers, then maybe the beef should be with government, rather than with Wal Mart. Let’s pass some amendments that prohibit the government from picking and choosing who gets what specialized (not-generally-available) benefits. Yes, we’d all have to give up the prospect of governments giving specialized benefits to the firms we like, but if we’re not willing to do that we don’t have much standing to complain when the other side gets benefits we disapprove of.
It makes no sense to hate on the players because they know how to work the rules of the game–it’s the officials and the rulemakers you need to be targeting.Report
James, I have repeatedly said that I think a big problem is our lack of re-evaluating the rules, our unwillingness to include that in our budgeting for government.
But I disagree with you this: Outcompeting other firms is the name of the game, and is what brings the consumer the best outcome. Protecting existing businesses is foolish–there’s no first in time, first in right to prosperity rule.
It’s not about who comes first; it’s about who has the ability to capture regulation for competitive advantage, which is exactly what WalMart has done. The towns that have become ghost towns end up supporting WalMart because there are no longer any other options, and those options have vanished because WalMart fails to provide a living wage or health insurance and instead turns those tasks over to the social safety net.Report
I don’t really buy this. First, I truly haven’t seen any of these ghost towns, and I’m pretty darn familiar with a lot of small midwestern towns. On Thanksgiving evening, as my wife and I drove home from my mom’s house, we passed four towns with Wal Marts (we noticed, because we marveled that people would actually go stand in long lines on Thanskgiving night to save $100 on a TV). The town sizes were 7700, 9300, 16500 and 20000. None of them are ghost towns, nor anything like it, and to the extent they are less than vibrant it has to do with loss of manufacturing jobs, not the presence of Wal Mart.
But if you agree that the real problem is government, let’s join together in criticizing the government, and stop focusing on the corporation.Report
All the world is not those towns.
Where I live, WalMart pretty much devastates Main St. unless the town’s got another pull factor. (Freeport, Maine, for instance, has L.L. Bean & various sundry outlet shops. Mexico, Maine? Not so much. Oxford, Maine, used to have three service centers — Oxford’s own, Norway, and South Paris — all suffering and with growing vacancies since the WalMart opened up.)
So while you may be correct in those necks of the woods, it’s not a truism everywhere.
But here’s what’s really bothering me — why you’re working so hard to defend one of the largest corporations in the world, as a libertarian, when it is obviously rent seeking and eliminating the ability of smaller companies to compete?
I don’t get it. WalMart’s model would have the whole world with what WalMart opts to stock and nothing else. Manufacturers who supply WalMart have to be huge, have little in the way of profit margin, and often fail because it’s difficult to comply with their supplier demands; and in the process find they’ve already had to give up their other more profitable markets.
You’re a smart guy, James. But this seems obtuseness, not smart. As I said: if you brought me a business plan based on this, I’d see it as inevitably doomed; too dependent on oversized suppliers, too dependent on regulatory capture, and too big to be nimble. I see WalMart as a doomed company, though it may take a while. And when it fails, it’s going to destruct a huge chunk of the world’s economy with it, unless folks get smart and start working the antitrust/monopoly laws as intended. But right now, the Waltons are the modern robber barrons. And you’re cheering them on. Like I said, I just don’t get it.Report
I’m not trying to defend Wal Mart. I’m trying to point out that Wal Mart isn’t the problem, if our concern is governments giving them advantages they don’t give to others. The problem is the government, and there’s no point bitching about Wal Mart because if they cleaned up their act some other firm would come in and play their old strategy.
Let’s go after the governments that have the authority to give them those specialized benefits. Quit saying Wal Mart’s destroying our downtowns and get loud and clear about our governments destroying our downtowns.
But if you want to know what I’m really cheering on, it’s competition. And I’m completely unconcerned about whether a big firm beats a small firm, or vice versa, or whether they each continue to thrive happily. If there’s a level playing field as far as how government treats all businesses, I truly don’t care if Grandma’s Cookie Shop can’t compete with the Wal Mart bakery. If people don’t find it worthwhile to go to Grandma’s for their cookies anymore, I’m not about to tell them they should or to rig the game so they will.
Please understand: the pro-market approach is not a pro-corporation approach; it’s a pro-competition approach.Report
WalMart has opted to force the hours of employees down below that where they’d be required to provide health insurance and to pay the absolute minimum the can in wages.
That is not a government failure.
But it’s a WalMart feature, for their employees can only afford to shop at. . .Report
Millersburg, PA. I can cite half a dozen others, including Saxton, PA.Report
Good for Wal Mart, then. Outcompeting other firms is the name of the game, and is what brings the consumer the best outcome.
Only according to single, very narrow, metric. There are other variables. Wage rates, distribution of profits to community members which get spend in the community, etc. Walmart may have better prices, but individual rationality may lead to a more collectively impoverished community.Report
Protecting Walmart is foolish. Walmart gets tax breaks to put up a store. Mom ‘n Pop don’t get those breaks.Report
Okay, so they agree that food-service employees ought to be paid fifteen dollars an hour. It’s now cheaper to replace them with an automated assembly line that pulls prefab items from a freezer, microwaves them, and spits them out at the customer.
“But people want a human touch in food service!”
Really? Interesting. Tell me more about how you like to make poor people dance for your amusement.Report
This. Best comment of the thread.Report
It’s point escapes me, unfortunately. Perhaps you could elaborate.Report
Me too. Explain how your saying that you consider Bob or Jane’s job to be beneath contempt makes me a jerk.Report
In all my years of writing robots, I have yet to see a single human replaced by a robot. If McDonald’s could run a completely robotic shop, they’d do it in a heartbeat.
McDonald’s doesn’t give a shit what those poor people are doing. There’s an event clock running on each order. Time is money, you know.Report
I’ve worked around a number of robots.
They always require calibration.
Nothing can screw things up as quickly and efficiently as a robot out of specs.Report
No doubt, sir. As I’ve said, automation can only take things so far. Beyond a certain point, automation just doesn’t pay. Time is money but there’s only so much time saved by the application of automation to a problem.
At any rate, it’s not cheaper to replace a McJerb with a McRobot, whatever Duck might say about it.Report
I wish they would automate McD’s, some of the folks that work at my local shop are as dumb as a bag of rocks. They can’t make change and they bag my food for take out though I tell them I want to eat there.Report
Shazbot,
Sorry for the delay, I went for a bike ride.
I was looking for the other studies on prosperity and finally found the following artile which summarizes five studies and the problems with combining so much data ino a routine, exact score. They do all show the same basic trends.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj17n2-1.html
One important point on the Heritage and other studies which track prosperity. These ARE NOT measures of growth rate. Thus the criticism above that the studies don’t correlate with growth is because they were not intending to and don’t. As I understand it, this is because catch up technological growth is so easy for laggards. In other words, wealthy countries have a lot harder time sustaining two percent growth than poor countries.
The Cato summary does point to other studies that measure growth using different methodology.Report
Roger was that paper written in 1997?
We’re looking for empirical evidence, I think recent is better. I can’t even find what people on the internet say about the data, because it is so damned old.
That said, you’ll have to explain the argument in the paper to me. I don’t get it. What data is there and what is the conclusion?Report
Shazbot,
The point was to reveal five different methodologies all of which reveal that after a certain point, excess government interference leads to lower growth or lower standards of living. Feel free to explore the different data bases.Report
Yes, but this isn’t borne out by the data. Country’s with more gov’t interference have higher standards of living, quality of life, equality of opportunity than the U.S. At the very least they are on par.
The U.S. is the global leader in GDP per capita over the long term, true, but it is not clear how much of that has to do with low taxes at all, even in the U.S.: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-economic-growth-a-new-65-year-study-finds/262438/
What do you see as the evidence in the paper that you cited to show that we need low taxes and less spending to maximize growth?
I admit, there may be a small GDP-growth drop if we create real equality of opportunity (it’s an empirical question, after all), but I don’t see the evidence. I do see evidence that any such GDP-growth drop is likely to be small (and not connected to a loss in quality of life or standards of living) because there are other countries that are evidence that we can increase social spending, the minimum wage, etc., and still have low unemployment, high GDP per capita, etc.
Why can’t we be like European countries like Sweden or Denmark? Why shouldn’t we be? You tell me what the evidence is in the paper.Report
Shazbot,
The data strongly disagrees with you.*
Here is an explanation on the empirical data….
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2005/03/the-impact-of-government-spending-on-economic-growth
And if you would rather watch it in video format with a real live classical liberal…
http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/a-fiscal-policy-tutorial-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-economics-of-government-spending/
*Your link conflates top income rate and the actual effective rates, and was pretty much off topic.Report
Related, Henry Hazlitt, 1946: “As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X. . . .
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. . . . He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him.
…
It is an historic irony that when this phrase, the Forgotten Man, was revived in the nineteen thirties, it was applied, not to C, but to X; and C, who was then being asked to support still more X’s, was more completely forgotten than ever. It is C, the Forgotten Man, who is always called upon to stanch the politician’s bleeding heart by paying for his vicarious generosity.”
Boldface mine.Report
Brilliant.Report
Is C the 47%? Because I feel just terribly for people who make enough money to pay taxes. What shame that they are now called upon to support the system that nourished them!Report
C is Donald Trump, the Koch Brothers, the Queen of England, Sheldon Adelson, Paris Hilton, Bernie Madoff, Gordon Gekko, Mitt Romney, and every Bond villain.
Bravo you person who sometimes makes racist and misogynist comments but is on themasthead.Report
Ugh.
The Rahn Curve and the Laffer Curve.
Quick question for Roger: Are developing countries and their GDP growth included in the Rahn Curve? (The answer is yes, BTW)
If so, the Rahn curve “proves” the following two claims with equal validity:
1. If you want high GDP growth, don’t become a wealthy, democratic, happy country (that has high GDP) because that kills GDP growth
2. If you want high GDP growth, don’t let government spend more money than about 20-25 of total GDP.
This is a joke. The data is supposed to show that we would have high GDP growth like developing nations by reducing government spending to their levels. But it might just be that wealthy nations imevitably experience two things: 1. a slowdown in growth, and 2. A use of their wealth to buy equality of opportunity. But thatdoesn’t mean that 2. is the cause of 1.. Not even close.
Correlation is not causation and all that.
But I think we are off the rails.
I propose a ceasefire until a new thread comes up.Report
Shazbot,
On the Kip paper, I was not arguing with you on inequality, and unless you want to start a new front page post, I would rather not deviate into that topic, yes, his paper, which I haven’t read in months, was about inequality, but I was only linking to it for the facts that it quoted on relative income, growth and unemployment between EU and US. (though these strings get long and confusing so if I am mistaken please forgive me)
The data I have is that we are much more prosperous, despite our higher prosperity have a higher growth rate, and a lower LT unemployment rate.
You owe me a more current unemployment rate which youve assured me has reversed this trend and I am hoping you also have data on education expenditure, health care expenditure, safety net expenditure comparisons etc. i would also love to see income comparisons of the poor by nation if you hav them. I am unaware of these data, and would love to see them.
To be more specific, I want to see what it is you are using to say that the poor are so much better off over there. ThanksReport
Grist, meet mill. The OECD hits the fan.
http://www.businessinsider.com/censored-poverty-report-in-germany-2012-11Report
Unemployment rates for some European countries with much higher levels of spending and taxation:
Australia, 5.4
Austria, 3.9
Belgium, 7.4
Canada, 7.4
Denmark, 6.2
Finland, 7.6
France (the Euro trouble!)10.2
Germany, 5.4
Netherlands, 6.6
New Zealand, 6.8
Norway (oil is good), 3.0
Sweden, 7.3
Switzerland, 3.1
U.K., 7.8
U.S., 7.3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemployment_rate
I left out the really troubled victims of the Euro-banking crisis (though it has effects to an extent everywhere.) The Euro-crisis isn’t relevant to our dispute.
Lots of the countries above have much more government spending (as a percent of GDP) , higher taxes, more gov’t regulation, better minimu wage. Almost all have socialized healthcare and more equal, more subsidized forms of public, higher education. (All spend less on prisons, too.)
The U.S. spends less as a percentage of GDP, per capita, than most of them, especially Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the U.K., and France
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_percentage_of_GDP
The U.S. comes out worse, or very middle of the pack, on many metrics, like quality of life. The U.S. fares worse here than Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Canada. A least there’s no reason to believe the U.S. has a higher average quality of life as a result of lower, less progresive taxation and spending:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-life_Index
And as Kenworthy graphs here, the U.S. is desperately far back on intergenerational equality of outcomes, i.e. equality of opportunity. (Your odds of escaping poverty, if your parents are poor, is much worse than in most parts of wealthy Europe.)
http://lanekenworthy.net/2012/01/31/inequality-mobility-opportunity/
Finally, my point about the Heritage “Economic Freedom” index as I pointed out, as explained by economists, isn’t correlated with (and surely isn’t causally connected to) things like GDP growth, quality of life, equality of opportunity and intergenerational mobility, or anything that matters. In short it is a useless measure designed to say that countries with more freedom for big businesses to avoid regulation are somehow better. It is just not clear how.
But we are far afield of everything and have too many disputes on the table for a single thread.Report
In short, I don’t see much evidence for a worse economy or standard of living if we increase social spending and taxes over time. Other countries do it. So can we.
We can do it better, maybe.Report
Shazbot
I looked up the data and Europe has a higher unemployment rate than the US. You just cherry picked, albeit openly. The fact that you pulled out the ones that have the worst problem with spending to make a point for more spending is especially suspect. If you want to profile Norway, please compare it to North Dakota.
As you probably guessed, a classical liberal is not going to be a fan of a well being index that assumes a critical component of national well being is weather and union membership. I have other criticisms, but don’t see the point….
Europe has a substantially lower standard of living. So much so that if you forced Americans to live at that level they would probably have you tarred and feathered. I am still trying to understand if their average person even lives as well as our poor. It is certainly debatable, though I doubt Europe is that much worse off than us. They also have lower growth rates, so they are worse off and losing ground. They have higher unemployment, and have for some time.
The only area we seem worse off, as discussed earlier, is that lower quintile males seem more stuck in poverty than is true in Europe. I’ve got lots of ideas on how to address this, but they don’t include replicating the European model. Indeed my guess is we are their future on this issue.
If you would like to read some studies on the harmful effects of government spending levels on prosperity and growth, I have some great links. Just let me know.
As always, you are a pleasure to chat with.Report
Always a pleasure, Roger,
That said, I don’t think we’re getting anywhere. We have too many distinct disagreements all on the table.
“he data and Europe has a higher unemployment rate than the US.”
Are you including the countries effected by the Euro crisis, especially Spain, Italy and Greece? We should compare like to like to tet proper arguments by analogy. Wealthy northern european countries like Sweden, France, U.K., U.S., Canada, etc. are all pretty comparable. We should also make our samples as large as possible without entering countries in that are clearly disanalagous, so we should eliminate countries that are effected by a crisis that literally cannot effect the U.S., if we are trying to see what would happen to the U.S. if we became more like such and such countries. This is obvious.
Comparing the U.S. to its rivals in wealthy Europe (in terms of wealth, education. etc.) we do okay on some measures (especially those that take into account overall GDP or GNI) and pretty average to poor on others (especially those that take into account equality of opportunity, and quality of life more abstractly defined. (The U.S. does well on the HDI, which uses GNI partially, but Euro countries aren’t far behind and some lead on occasion.)
BTW, here are two smart posts on U.S. and Europe GDP (which is the U.S. claim to success according to Roger) from 2010
Yglesias points out that Europe lags on GDP per capita because it has always lagged, since 1820, not because of socialism versus more laissez faire markets.
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/01/12/195763/the-united-states-has-always-been-rich/?mobile=wt
Krugman points out that usual cases for the conclusion that Europe is economically held back or by improved social spending or higher taxes is often based on cherry picked data (or at least Manzi’s case was).
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/european-decline-a-further-note/
I am growing weary of the debate though.Report
Thanks Shaz,
Two final points…
Growth is much harder for the leader and much, much easier on followers. This is because it is easier and more efficient to replicate institutional and technological progress than to create it in the first place. Germany and France have been drafting off GB and the US for centuries. The rest of the workd even more so. Thus Yglesius’ point is really off.
I honestly see absolutely no evidence that we should drop the gold medal institutions to pick up tips from a distant bronze who owes his position to drafting off the true leaders.
Second, do you have any data on consumption comparisons between the bottom fifth in your beloved Nordic countries and the US? If so, that could bolster your argument.Report
Aso, take a look here (especially for first 3-4 posts) for a bunch of cool links and writeups on spending on equality of opportunity and economic growth.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/productivity/
In brief, there is a lot of evidence that large transfers from the rich to poor children to creete equality of opportunity actually increases GDP and economic growth. Increases!
See especially the links to articles by Kaplan, Kenworthy, Taylor, and Fischer.
Note that this is information from a variety of sources, not just Heritage and Cato over and over and over again. When all your info comes from one or two places with stated ideological leanings, you have to take a long look in the mirror.Report
Shazbot again,
Just to clarify, I am not asking to pay teachers less. I am saying prosperity comes about when we can get schools to be more efficient and productive. In general, this will likely lead to higher wages.
I think great teachers should make a great salary, and that teachers should be allowed to compete with each other for the best and highest paying possible professional salaries. I am well aware that the current Bureacracy that they are enmeshed in at schools makes their productivity almost impossible. It is really hard for a professional level person to understand why a fellow professional would ver want to unionize. I do not have any trouble “getting” why teachers want to to so. Their environments suck and the Bureacracy they work in will stifle their humanity if they don’t fight back.
I believe good teachers would thrive in a freed market. I think much of the bureaucracy around them would suffer, as would bad teachers. But most importantly, kids would thrive.Report
“I believe good teachers would thrive in a freed market.”
No unions for workers = Free Market
???
Organized labor is not antithetic to free markets.
—-
So you mean, if the unions just disbanded, teacher pay would sky rocket?
Why hasn’t it sky rocketed in southern states with no unions or hobbled unions?
Amd as a former adjunct, I can tell you that without a union, teachers will make crap all without a union, even less than what they make now.Report
Shazbot
I am not sure what your point is. Non coercive unions are an acceptable part of free markets.Report
Suppose governments gave unions some operatong cash, thereby nullifying the need for mandatory dues.
Would they be coercive then?
BTW, even mandatory union dues are no more “coercive” (we must be careful how we use this word) than bus fare. They are designed to solve a moral-hazard problem of wanting to benefit from the union, but not pay for it. Believe me, your dues are worth more to you through your salary than you would lose without the union.
The company is free to negotiate with individuals not in the union. (But not in the union.) You are free to sell your labor as a scab and not join the union or pay union dues. And the union is free to ask you to pay union dues if you want the benefit of collective bargaining.
You are not free to force your employer and a union to hire you at the wages that the union and the employer negotiated without joining the union. Nor are you free to force the union to enter a collective bargaining agreement with the employer that states “The union will allow Roger and thousands of others to work for Shazbotco, without striking, even though Roger isn’t covered by the bargaining agreement.
This is obvious.Report
I am not sure my favorite solution would be to convert from coercive dues to coercive taxes.
Let me instead ask, are coercive dues really required? Why not voluntary dues? Why not supplement this with voluntary donations from like minded non members? Why not build the payment of the dues into the employer requirement in the union contract?
If the dues are being used to pay salaries for people who specialize in representing workers, why not have it built into the labor contract that one annually elected worker representative will be allowed to specialize full time in this role? Why not have volunteers play this role one evening a month?
Why not use shame or status to get other employees to join and contribute dues?Report
Why not put some workers on the board of directors?Report
Another idea that requires no coercion! The workers can negotiate for this, yes.Report
That’s how Germany manages things, as I’ve repeatedly said. I don’t see management giving up seats on the board without a fight or a buyout or legislation to that effect, which Germany did.
It’s so obvious. In Germany, closed unions are illegal because they are coercive. But since workers have a legal right to have a presence in the boardroom, the entire wretched Marxian Struggle is shunted to ground: workers and management are on the same page. They make it work over there. Sure wish we could, here.Report
Again, we find ourselves in agreement. Of course, I’ll add that I don’t really care how any particular company chooses to organize itself, so long as it is allowed to fail if management-labor relations get in the way of producing a product that benefits consumers.Report
Actually, this requires the government forcing groups of individuals to form the boards one way or another. That actually is coercion (unlike union dues, which are agreed upon within a democratic group of private citizens, like club fees) though it seems perfectly acceptable to me.Report
The union is a priavate organization. So is the business thatthe union contracts with (bargaining agreements are contracts. If the union votes to have mandatory dues and people can choose to leave the union, how is it coercive.
Sure, if you leave the union. the company won’t hire you because of the agreement the company has entered into with the union.
But there is no coercion involved in mandatory dues at all. None.Report
Yes, you are right. As long as this is agreed to between members.Report
Yes, once the union has taken a vote and passed mandatory dues, or voted for leaders who institute such dues, then the dues are not “coercion” even if some people don’t want to pay them.
But that is how all union dues work, so they are never coercive.
Coercion would be if the government forced them to not have mandatory dues.Report
Kids are thriving at school, just not at home, if they live in poverty.Report
Are poor parents incapable of providing love and nurture?Report
Nurture? Is that a joke?Report
All the love and nuturing in the world can’t turn on the power if they couldn’t afford to pay the electric bill.Report
Not incapable. Not at all. But creating a nurturing environment is harder, much harder, when you are poorer. Thus, in the aggregate, you will see kids thriving less in impoverished places.Report
I am saying prosperity comes about when we can get schools to be more efficient and productive.
Efficient? Perhaps. Productive? In the sense of more output per unit of labor? That’s a fool’s mission. Education, alongside healthcare, lawyering, and other professional services, is essentially a handicraft, and it always will be. A hundred years ago the optimum class size was about twenty or so. Now? The optimum class size is… about twenty or so.
Why do you imagine you can realize industrial productivity gains in non-industrial sectors? The real gains from technology and innovation to be realized in non-industrial fields is in quality, not quantity.
In general, this will likely lead to higher wages.
And when the hell has this actually happened? At least without active government involvement pushing things in that direction? Roger, the link between productivity gains and wage improvements hasn’t held since 1973 (see my Comment Rescue; BTW, pretty cool, huh?).
The canard that rising productivity leads to higher wages is, at best, a contingent outcome that assumes facts not currently in evidence. It assumes that the gains from productivity will be shared with the worker rather than applied to lower prices or sopped up by Capital in higher profits. In a slack labor market there’s simply no reason for management to pay higher wages.
Basically, the theory assumes that wages are a function of the worker’s actual output rather than a result of supply and demand in the labor market. It’s just a permutation on the labor theory of value and I have to wonder why you’re flogging that in stealth when you would soundly reject it when presented in the light of day.Report
RR,
I would settle for the efficiency/ productivity adjusted for inflation we had thirty years ago, which was double what it is now. Free markets seek out efficiency and weed out excess bureaucracy and rent seeking via creative destruction. Examples here would include less administration, better teachers, better incentives, better use of technology, etc.
As for the quality or quantity argument, I am fine with better quality. The quality in question would be better educated students. That is what has flat lined.
Wage gains have happened pretty much everywhere that productivity has occurred. It is a matket phenomenon though, not necessarily an industry one. Historically this occured in the US and Europe, Asia, etc. A lot of this is due to the effects of comparative advantage. It has occurred since 1973 as well, though the regulatory distortions drove much of the increase to benefits, rather than wages. Recently international competition for lower skilled jobs has put pressure on this, but the reduced rate of gain in our privileged citizens has come from increased gains in wages for the truly needy. The last decade was the best for worldwide human prosperity since the big bang. I am sure you are celebrating.
You are right that I would reject the labor theory of value. The reason that I believe free market teachers would be paid more is that there would be a high demand for better teachers as the wheat is separated fom the chaff, so to speak. Technically you are right though that schools could compete for the best teachers via better working conditions, less red tape and more freedom.Report
“Free markets seek out efficiency and weed out excess bureaucracy.”
1. Not always. Not by any stretch. See healthcare costs in the U.S.
2. Free markets work better than socialist command economies, but free markets temped with a strong social safety net, regulations, progressive taxation, subsidized public education, do better than more laissez-faire markets.
The middle ground between Marx and Smith is best on pure GDP terms. The only question is where is the sweetspot: closer to Danish/Swedish/French levels of government involvement or U.S. levels.Report
Healthcare is a totally interfered with market.*
I agree with you on free markets with effective safety nets.
*. And just because they seek doesn’t mean they always find.Report
Just so we’re clear, what markets aren’t interfered with to some degree?
Moreover, which of the following has the least government “interference”, in the healthcare system of
A.) Canada
B.) The U.K
C.) France
D.) The U.S., at least up until the ACA
If you say anything but D., we’re off the rails in even being able to talk.
If you do say D., and you recognize that there is always a minimum of “interference” in any large well-functioning market (a la Hanley), and you believe less regulated markets are more efficient, then you absolutely have to (on pain of obvious logical contradiction) claim that the U.S. healthcare system is more efficient than the other 3.
And to say that the U.S. has the more efficient healthcare system is absurd. So one of the assumptions that lead us there, must be false. I’d say it is the incredibly strong (and not well supported) assumption that less interference is ALWAYS more efficient.Report
Markets require rules.
Markets do not require active, constant interference to manipulate outcomes.
It is very possible that a totally managed system is better than a hodge podge. Their health care markets are better managed than ours. I have previously clarified how the markets could be improved, but this is way off topic.Report
Ues but you agree, in the case oh health carr at least, that “interference” creates more efficiency. I have argued that you must accept that.
So you must accept that “interference” sometimes creates efficiency.Report
Man, I was tired when I wrote that.Report
Also, I think Pareene is right about the trillion dollar welfare dishonesty here:
“http://www.salon.com/2012/10/18/new_lie_the_government_spends_more_on_welfare_than_everything_else/”Report
Shazbot
Get serious. The point is that means tested aid to those less well off is indeed a really,really big number made up of a lot of programs. This guy is spinning pure rhetoric.Report
But a lot of it goes to people who are, have been, or will be middle or upper middle class: especially medicaid for seniors in nursing homes, Pell grants for middle class kids, student loan interest payments for middle class and even weathy kids, etc.
It isn’t “welfare” for the neediest (working poor and the destitute) on whom we spend comparatively little. It is money that is necessary to keep the middle class in the middle class.
The people who peddle this dishonesty want the rubes to hear that we spend too much on “the undeserving poor” and “welfare queens”, but we spend very little on the unemployed poor and the working poor.Report
The libertarian ideal economic theory seems to have two tenants. First, competitive free markets and second, absence of government interference in same. A market is seen as “free” when government doesn’t interfere and then, as a consequence, the natural market forces of supply and demand will produce the “right” or “correct” prices. Therefore, any interference such as minimum wage laws, mandated benefits, workplace safety regulations, or laws aiding and abetting union activity will necessarily distort the natural workings of the marketplace and result in equilibrium levels of wages that are (tautologically!) less than optimum and most efficient.
Let’s examine this. Competitive market theory presupposes a large number of both buyers and sellers, such that no individual or group of individuals (a cartel) can move the market. In other words, all participants are price takers vs. price makers. It also presupposes that all participants are free to buy or sell with no coercion. No buyers are forced to buy and no sellers are forced to sell.
So the question is, Does the market for labor, sans government interference, satisfy the preconditions for competitive market theory?
Answer: No. The primary failure is that workers, who enter the market as sellers of labor services, are compelled by biological imperatives to conclude a transaction. People have to eat (and need shelter, clothing, etc.) to survive, food must be purchased, and they must sell their labor services (get a jerb!) to procure those funds. The labor market comes fresh out of the box, pre-distorted for your convenience.
Now the reality is, of course, more complex. There isn’t just a market for labor. There are literally hundreds of thousands of labor markets. There are markets for programmers in Kansas City, and waitresses in Memphis, and file clerks in Dallas. Workers can shift, with more or less difficulty, between markets, changing careers or moving to other locales. Some markets are tight and some markets are slack. But the basic dynamic always prevails, that the worker must sell their services, somewhere, somehow, to someone, or, in the absence of social welfare assistance, suffer dire consequences. And while employers, the purchasers of labor services, may on occasion confront a tight market for the needed labor, it is rarely a case of hire-or-die*. It’s also generally the case that there are many more sellers of labor services than buyers, in some locales this can approach a monopsony condition.
If the libertarian advocate of free markets wishes to flog the same for labor markets, then it is incumbent on this advocate to address this out-of-the-box distortion from competitive market ideal. There are two ways I see to do this. First, remove entirely the requirement to sell labor to live, i.e., a guaranteed minimum income. Or, second, introduce a substitute buyer for labor services other than the private marketplace, i.e., a full-employment guarantee at a “living” wage.
The first option is the “purest” in the sense of rendering employment totally optional, but it introduces the specter of substantial moral hazard. On the other hand, there’s a lot of people that don’t work that we also don’t castigate for that. Children, the elderly, the disabled, and the well-to-do trust fund babies.
The second option seems more attractive to me. Institute a policy of guaranteed employment at a locally-determined** living wage, administered by local governments and paid from Federal funds. Simultaneously, eliminate other wage-and-hour laws, etc. These jobs would be guaranteed to any adult who knocks on the door. This agency would also serve as the local labor resource pool for private employers as well as offering job training and retraining services.
Discussion?
* The obvious exception being the need to hire specific medical services in dire straits.
** A living wage looks a lot different in Buttscratch, WY than it does in Manhattan, NY.Report
RR,
Sorry, but you are wrong. Wages will go where supply meets demand, and need has very little to do with it.
This article will explain why.
http://mises.org/daily/5934/The-Irrelevance-of-Worker-Need-and-Employer-Greed-in-Determining-WagesReport
You didn’t even fucking read my post, did you, Roger? Or you didn’t understand it, take your pick.
If you need clarification, just let me know because your comment had no relationship to anything I wrote.Report
RR,
I am respectfully disagreeing with the premise of your essential fifth paragraph.
I did not weigh in on your recommendations, because I reject the premise. I suppose your recommendation could be better than what we have now in aid, minimum wage, government service unions, etc. But I do not know.Report
Wages will go where supply meets demand, and need has very little to do with it.
Because need has no effect on supply.
I’m beginning to think Roger is performance art.Report
Mike,
Read the article, and let me know where Dr. Reisman is wrong.Report
He treats Econ 101 abstractions as if they’re literally true. E.g. the guy who has to sell his car right away has access to a market with perfect information and no difficulties with contacting all possible buyers or arranging mutually convenient times for test drives, so he can sell it at the magical market price.Report
Excellent point. Markets are never perfect. Note I said need has little to do with it, not nothing to do with it.
Now back to jobs. It is true that in a world with no safety nets that an applicant would need to find a job faster than a company would need to fill a single opening. This implies that the company can wait, interview more people, and so on so that the market works better for them. Advantage company.
If however a person has a job, they can now take their time too, and use their job and their experience to leverage better opportunities within the company and outside. Add in the issues of other family members, unemployment insurance, and other safety nets, and the net result is that the need disparity greatly washes out. In the end, the rate that companies offer for a job is their best approximation of what they need to offer to get the quality of applicant considering that other firms are trying to hire them too. And that is what big firms tend to do. They don’t negotiate wages with people off the street. They set a wage rate and hire to it. If they get all “game theory” with the applicant, they expose themselves to turnover a the applicant takes the first fair offer available. This is why Ford offered higher wages, not so Workers would buy the cars.
Thus, I disagree with RR’,s two necessary conclusions on mandating living wages.Report
“I’m tired of being courteous to guests for $7.25!”
God forbid anyone be courteous unless they’re paid at least $15 an hour to do so.
I’ve worked with people like that in the past. My casual observation tells me they’re not particularly courteous at any price, because more money doesn’t change their instincts. They’re also the ones who aren’t in contention for promotions, because promotions go more often to those who say “what else can I do (at this pay rate)” than to those who say “I’m not getting paid enough to do even this much.”Report
Capitalism does exploit workers, for better and for worse. The question is, how much exploitation is tolerable, considering they do the work and they never see any more profit than their abysmal wages?
Systematically screw someone over, tell him he’s just being unreasonable, ask him to behave professionally all the while, see where it gets you. Nowhere good.Report
Exploitation, like Sh!+, happens. The difference between classical liberals and you new breeds is that we are against exploitation, properly defined. The new breeds are for protected classes (as defined by the left) and they will even endorse exploitation if it seems to further the cause of their favored classes.Report
Sure, it happens. And furthermore, it’s pointless to get all huffy and whiny about Protected Classes, et. al. That sort of parentalism is just bad for business. People ought to be able to stand up for themselves. McDonald’s workers (and many others) are being screwed — by the very sort of Parental System which was instituted to protect part-time workers trying to get out of the welfare trap. See where this is leading? I’m not a garden variety Liberal.
So let’s get that much clear: if workers are sposta behave professionally, it would seem reasonable to treat them professionally.Report
we are against exploitation, properly defined.
Say, punishing success by returning marginal tax rates to 1999 levels.Report
So given that these are realities – people have these limitations, and these are increasingly the kinds of jobs that will be created by this economy for people with such limitations – and the fact that opportunities for advancement will always be limited un comparison to the number of of entry-level positions: where does this exactly leave the ideological justification for the whole setup that relies on precisely the notion that people aren’t actually consigned to this kind of work at these kinds of wages for large parts of their lifetimes; that instead the idea that people are stuck in that way (and hence the whole idea of income inequality being much of a problem) is a mirage, and upward mobility and advancement is what really characterizes our system?Report
I’m not engaging in the larger debate. I’m just mocking someone who thinks that being courteous to people shouldn’t be a normal way of life, but something you shouldn’t have to do until you get paid enough per hour.
That person’s real problem is not lack of unionization.Report
One of her problems might be a lack of unionization.Report
Not the fundamental problem, not with a person who makes those kinds of claims.
I’m imagining a Clerks/Waiting type movie with Samuel Jackson as a server leading a unionization effort. “You want some courtesy out of me, Motherfisher?! You tip first, then I’ll smile and say have very nice fishin’ day!”Report
Right, because she’s aiming her demands directly at the customer (which is pretty clearly how you internalize it, actually), rather than going out in public and saying to her employer, I’m unwilling to do my job for my wage anymore.
She did not say she’s unwilling to be courteous in her life for $7.25 an hour. She said she’s unwilling to be courteous to guests, which fairly means, this restaurant’s guests, at their site, in their uniform, when they say she needs to be. How does that say anything about her general willingness to be courteeous, or the extent to which she is in her life. You can read her statement one way – that she must have a problem being courteous – and I can read it another – that with courtesy that far at the top of the list of words she uses when she says what she does for a living, that it’s likely she is one of the most courteous employees to this restaurant’s guests that it has. An employee not inclined to be courteous might have said, “I’m tired of making change and giving people their burgers for $7.25 and hour!” Who really knows?
Your point is a dodge, or at least a distraction, in any case. Yes, courtesy is a virtue in life. Does that meant that this person should be expected to want to show up on that site day in and day out and be courteous to this business’ guests in their clothes for free? ‘Being courteous to guests’ just happens to be the descriptor she used for her job, which is more involved than that, at that moment. And it just so happens that being courteous is something that you can say she ought to do generally in her life. (It so happens because she happens to be in the position of selling services that don’t require much skill – or rather skills that are perhaps thought to be common rather than rare or difficult to develop, which, I guess, bully for you to be in the position vis-a-vis her.)
That’s all a distraction because it’s incidental to the real point – her point – which is that she’s demanding a raise. If the statement that instead applied to her position was, “I’m tired of writing code for $725/week (or $72,500 per annum)!”, it wouldn’t make as much sense for you to say, ‘Well, writing code is a trait is a you should be developing in yourself anyway, so this is an indefensible statement.’ She happens to be in a position to have to sell (among other things) her willingness to be courteous to every single person who walks in the door during her shift, which puts us all in a position to be able to judge her for how her emotional relationship to her personal demeanor is changed by her economic relationship to it.
Well, we could lay off of her for that and just hear her meaning: that she wants a raise to keep doing what she’s doing. We could criticize her for taking her case public, but in all likelihood it’s pretty much written in stone what increases are available to her, and they’re not acceptable (to her, now). She doesn’t have the leverage of, say, a codewriter with a degree of not-immediately-fungible firm-specific intellectual capital and the potentially resulting ability to force a change in terms. She needs to create her own leverage, and she’s doing what workers in her position have been doing for centuries. I don’t see what’s so indefensible here.Report
Those are good points Michael,
If all applicants are willing to require more than $7.25 to be courteous, then fast food places will have to pay more. Of course, some people are probably willing to be courteous for less, thus she is likely to find herself either out of a job or delivering better service. In the end the consumer wins.Report
Well, bully for us.Report
…Point being, while I like winning in that way as much as the next guy (it really bugs me, for example, when I get a barista who seems unhappy to be there, because I think I actually really would like to be able to serve people good coffee had I acquired those skills somewhere along the way [right now actually a nice coffee shop gig is pretty hard to come by & there’s a lot of people with a supple tamp hand out there looking for espresso machines to work], and I certainly think I’d be able to fake it for people willing to overpay for a non-necessary consumable when I wasn’t feeling that way…), nevertheless, I accept and am interested in hearing from people in other sectors of the service economy whose work environment and compensation seem like much less pleasant experiences to me (i.e. basically anyplace with friers and a business model of getting as many people their lunch as fast as mechanically possible). Service jobs, even ones paying a given wage, are not all the same, and our happiness as consumers rides on the experience of the workers who make that experience possible, all of whom have no choice but to do one thing or another for $7.25 (or $8 or what have you) per hour – otherwise they’d be taking it. That they voluntarily accept their daily bread for their 8 or ten hours of work doesn’t mean we should axiomatically declare them all happy (enough), nor, as far as I am concerned, be unsympathetic to their accounts of what it’s like to be a human whose work is to provide us consumers with a satisfying experience.
I appreciate the work service workers do to make my life as a consumer nicer, and I don’t mind a bit when they inevitably get to that place where they need to make some of the internal experience of that work public – not at the wages they command for that work. It’s amazing to me that anyone begrudges them momentary breaches of the illusions some of us apparently allow ourselves to have about the the experience and fulfillment provided by that kind of work.Report
This is a fantastic comment.Report
Thanks, Chris. I wrote with you in mind in part.Report
” being courteous to people shouldn’t be a normal way of life, but something you shouldn’t have to do until you get paid enough per hour.”
In retail, you don’t get paid to be courteous in a normal way. You get paid to be courteous even when (especially when) you are getting verbally abused. (Maybe that is strong wording, but you get the point.) That is the job, and it isn’t a natural, normal level of being courteous. Not at all.Report
I’ve done those jobs, and I’ve got my own stories about them just as much as anyone else. While you’re focusing on how unfair it is to the person to be mistreated, I’ll focus on a lesson I’m still trying to master (and I’m fully aware of how far from mastery I am), which is that being courteous in response to discourtesy is far more emotionally satisfying and de-stressing than letting the discourtesy get to you.Report
That’s interesting, and maybe more worthwhile discussing than economics and political philosophy. It would make a great OP, IMO. (Though fairness is important too.)
Courteousness is a good thing to aim at. But it may be too saintly to aim at it always.
Being virtuous and being saintly might be quite distinct, I suspect. Indeed, being discourteous at the right time, and the right place, for the right reasons might be a necessary part of a virtuous life. I’m not sure and would like to be convinced. Everything according to the golden mean.Report
Also,
“Serenity now!”Report
These types of jobs are starting points or stepping stones or dead ends. If someone with ambition wants to move up the ladder in a fast food place, there are many opportunities to advance. If someone wants to use a job like to work their way through college or a training education to get a better job, then fine. If someone wants to stay in a job like this and expect the company to change and give them more money because they think they should have more money, then it’s a dead end. Another thing that can happen in a job like this is to learn the business and start a little fast food deal that is unique and has potential to be successful, even if it’s a little more expensive to start with, if the place catches on, it can compete and grow. It’s not all about slaves trapped in by a mad clown.Report
James,
Even though I disagreed above with Will Truman on this issue, you (and he, to a large degree* ) are probably right. I don’t know this person specifically, of course, but such people, as you say, probably won’t be courteous at any price.
I suppose it depends, however, whether it’s a throwaway statement or representative of the worker’s overall attitude. And I didn’t read any of the links, so I don’t know if it’s covered there. And sometimes, I wager, some customers consider “courtesy” to be nothing less than “servile obsequiousness.”
I will say, in support of your statement, that in my experience, being courteous often has the advantage of making the job easier and making the day go by faster. Although a lot of customers don’t appreciate courtesy, many, maybe even a majority or a strong majority, do.
*But I wouldn’t say I have “absolutely no sympathy” for that argument, as he says. At the same time, I realize there is such a thing as hyperbole, and that hyperbole is
alwaysusuallyoftensometimes lost on me. So perhaps I overreacted.Reportt in my experience, being courteous often has the advantage of making the job easier and making the day go by faster.
I hadn’t thought about that, but it’s very true. And despite that small set of customers who are bound and determined to be a**holes, no matter what, in general the courtesy gets awarded by more courtesy from the customer, which is part–not all, but a large part–of what makes the job easier and the day faster (another part is just keeping yourself in a pleasant mood, even when things get upleasant–but that’s a damned sight harder for most of us than being in a pleasant mood because others are being pleasant to us).
I wouldn’t say I’m entirely unsympathetic to the person, but if it’s actually the job that’s making them discourteous, rather than discourtesy being their natural inclination (and courtesy only a false front they’ll suffer to put on when the price is right), then it’s probably not the pay as much as it is other working conditions; how they’re treated in general. My understanding is that studies have shown that pay actually isn’t one of the top things that affect employee morale.Report
“understanding is that studies have shown that pay actually isn’t one of the top things that affect employee morale.”
I’m guessing that is true only up to a point.
Pay me 2.50 a day, and my morale will suffer, especially if I can’t find better work, even if my work is nice,
I would say that having to be courteous is incredibly difficult. I had a guy yell at me for 15 minutes about how poor and stupid I was and how awesome he was, because I told him he shouldn’t bother paying 8.50 to get the pant hemmed because they looked good enough. My manager was watching and so was a girl that I liked. I went home and contemplated (briefly) killing myself out of sheer embarrasment about how pathetic I was for not quitting, but I needed the job and was scared to quit. Instead, I got drunk.
If The best that I could do was keep that job (which would’ve been the case if I had been unlucky enough to be born less able to overcome my addictions), I would start to resent that I had to live in poverty and be berated constantly, and I would be right to think that my wage and my situation was unfair.Report
Again, it looks like the problem was not the pay so much as how you were treated. A good boss would have stepped in. (Unfortunately, there are few truly good bosses around; most just like being in charge, and mistake that for being in control.)Report
But retail (and fast food, I imagine) requires that you tolerate being mistreated. The boss won’t always be there, and she will tell you that you should take the abuse, and smile, despite the fact that you feel like your dignity is being taken. The customer is always right. And I can take that attack on my dignity, but it makes the job hard.
The problem is this: Some people can’t get a job that is better than minimum wage while that job requires them to sometimes have their dignity attacked.
Really, the complaint that “I won’t deal with obnoxious customers for 7.50 an hour” is similar in form and meaning (though less in degree of awfulness) to “I won’t risk my life in that coal mine for 2.50.”
In both cases, the quote is -I think this is the point of the quote in the OP- evidence that low-paid workers are unhappy, believe their situation is unfair, and are in a psychological state that might lead them to trying to form a union.
I get that you think their treatment is fair.
But that is a dispute for another day, IMO.Report
“I won’t deal with obnoxious customers for 7.50 an hour”
That was _not_ the quote. You changed it, making it more amenable for your purposes. The original quote is not nearly as defensible.
I get that you think their treatment is fair.
Stop telling me what you think I think. What you’re thinking I think isn’t what I’m actually thinking. Just because your focus is on the concept of “fair” doesn’t mean that’s what my focus is on.Report
Original quote: “I’m tired of being courteous to guests for $7.25!”
Different: “I won’t deal with obnoxious customers for 7.50 an hour”
I have no problem with the different quote as a paraphrase. It seems a valid reading of the original quote that the problem – the issue – of the speaker is not being courteous to people who are courteous back, but the issue of maintaining courtesy in an environment where many customers are rude or abusive.
Rude or abusive, loud, customers in a sit-down eatery, a higher-end restaurant, are unlikely to happen. Rude or abusive customers in a fast food joint are commonplace.Report
I have no problem with the different quote as a paraphrase.
I do.Report
Sorry. Not sure why the difference is important. But I do apologize for the misquote or paraphrase:
Compare:
“I’m tired of working in the dangerous coal mine for 2.50.”
“I’m tired of being courteous to guests for 7.25”
I think my paraphrasing is a fair one of what someone who would complain about their wages actually intended to say.
I don’t want to tell you what you think.
I honestly thought that you would happily argue that this treatment is fair. I retract the claim and am happy that you (maybe? don’t want to put words in your mouth) think it is fair.
It is is also possible you believe that there is a violation of the Law of Non-contradiction here and that it is both fair and not fair at the same time.Report
You keep talking about fairness as though I might someday understand what you mean. I really don’t think in terms of fairness, so just because I don’t condemn something doesn’t mean I think it’s “fair”; it’s more likely to mean that I find the issue of fairness uninteresting or uninformative. I get the impression that’s difficult for you to understand–I think we’re coming from such fundamentally different approaches that it’s nearly impossible for us to understand each other.
So, attributing agreements/claims about “fairness” to me? You’re not actually having a conversation with me when you’re doing that.Report
Life isn’t fair. That said, we can mechanistically prove by experiment what fairness means. It’s a common problem in realtime computer science. I know this runs afoul of your definitional constraints but we do know from computer science how fairness works.
We even have utilities to attenuate fairness. man nice.Report
Blaise,
Different types of fair. He’s talking normative questions, which aren’t subject to experimental proof. And I’m not interested in having a tangential conversation about it.Report
Of course you don’t want to talk about fairness in any meaningful context. That would imply you’d have to explain why Unfair is a bogus charge.
Fairness does have meaning in the human context. Pay does affect morale, contrary to your assertion to the contrary. It takes more than a sympathetic and supportive boss, who in the case of the McDonald’s/Walmart model simply don’t exist. If they did exist, they’d be cutting in the workers for some of the profits and giving them enough hours so they could get insurance and many another little nice-to-have which these workers aren’t getting — and being denied on a systematic basis.
There’s also that business of keeping the worker poor enough so he can qualify for Food Stamps. If the rest of us think that’s not fair, perhaps you can pooh-pooh those sentiments.Report
Blaise,
I didn’t grok the link. Could you define what youb elieve fairness means?Report
Nice try, but you’re still pretending that somehow I’m thinking in the framework you’re using.Report
Pay does affect morale, contrary to your assertion to the contrary.
And of course I never said pay didn’t affect morale. But you’ve never let honesty get in the way of responding before, so we can hardly expect you to do so now. But I would expect someone in your line of work to understand multiple causation and how some causal factors have greater weight than others.Report
@Roger: As you’re aware, concurrency is a big issue with software. We don’t want one program hogging up resources. The nice command can demote a task in the scheduler to use fewer resources.
Laying out fairness would require an entire dissertation. A badly implemented scheduler leads to strange outcomes: contention for resources, deadlocks, race conditions, starvation. To work well in the context of concurrency, programmers should write their code with such problems in mind. The simple rule of thumb is this: write your code well enough that you could run two copies of it at the same time and they’re not going to interfere with each other. Harder than it seems. To preserve the illusion of concurrency, every program ought to be polite.
There are two sorts of fairness. One is Strong Fairness, which we could call a Justice Model. There’s Weak Fairness, which is a Compassion Model. Neither is any good in the real world: a beggar process should not be able to hog up the machine to the detriment of other programs. But the Justice Model makes people get out of the stall before they’ve finished their business, to use an unfortunate but entirely realistic analogy.
There are ways of testing these fairness propositions. Every process must get some time, obviously. But some really do need more resources than others. A backup process ought to be able to run without crippling your browsing session, for instance.
The way we test these fairness schemes is with Kripke Models and directed graphs. Optimising compilers, SHOW PLAN in SQL databases, chip layout software, these and many more nondeterministic problems are amenable to such analysis. But that’s all for mathematicians. In Windows, we can see what’s going on in Task Manager. In Linux, we have the top command, which gives us a picture of impolite processes.
As I said, it gets pretty involved. And it’s application specific: if you’re trying to run games or record sound/video, etc. you need a low-latency machine, a Justice-oriented machine. But for the rest of us, we want some balance between Justice and Compassion.
If that makes any sense at all, let me know…..Report
Well, as you know there are competing accounts of fairness and justice.
Rawls has one.
Nozick has one.
There are lots of amended versions of Locke and Rawls, and there are feminist alternatives and utilitarian alternatives. (You could also go full-on Platonist.)
But once you choose a concept of fairness or justice, (a concept of what the right distribution in general is) you can then talk about what, specifically is a just or good distribution of wealth (construed broadly to include wealth and office and opportunity), because each of these different accounts of fairness implies that we should accept different policies.
You seem to want to discuss policy even though you haven’t stated -with precision- what your account of fairness or distributive justice you accept.
It will be impossible for God himself to prove that you are making any mistake about which policies we should accept until you tell us your principles. No? How would someone try to prove your view wrong if not by showing that:
a.) Your principles of justice and fairness are wrong
b.) The policies you prefer wouldn’t lead to well-being according to your own principles.
But no one can possibly prove that you are wrong by method a.) or b.) until you tell us your principles of justice and fairness, precisely.
But if we can’t discover that you are wrong, why bother continuing?Report
The philosophers can’t do the math. Fairness is provable in essentially any context. The Libertarians are sooooo close to understanding this, insofar as we maximise freedoms we minimise friction. It’s just that some of them go haywire when it comes to regulation and the idea of a task scheduler would have them running around flapping their arms and screaming like frightened children.Report
Shaz,
Do all policy goals have to be couched in terms of fairness?
Why not in terms of aesthetics?
Why not in terms of efficiency?
Why not in terms of power?
Why not in terms of minimal degree of perversity in the outcome?
You keep assuming there must be a fairness or a justice standard. Spend a little time thinking about a different standard, one in which fairness is not a component, and one which you do not compare to a fairness standard.Report
Yes, policy does have to frame itself in the context of fairness. If it’s to apply to everyone with no flexibility —
Let’s just take you for instance. Are you a Libertarian? Sure, in an abstract sense, you’re a Libertarian. But the truth is, you’re really James Hanley and it’s unfair to ascribe things you don’t believe to you specifically. Had this discussion a long time ago with you.
Fairness is one of those odd words like Fun. There’s no defining it but we know it and seek it out. We don’t usually stop and say “This is fun” until the carnival ride is over. But we might, if we stopped and smelled the roses, which leads us to kinda stop having fun and take the picture….
Fairness is always conditional and contextual. JSMill goes on about this, so do the other consequentialists. It’s not quite as important as we think it is. A selfish little kid will wail “It’s so unfair!” as if there were no other considerations than his own wilful desires in a given context. Now it’s true, some parents treat children unfairly. But when we observe such behaviour, there’s always some undesirable aspect to the behaviour demonstrated. Kids aren’t expected to understand the larger context. We do, however, reject unfair dealings and often make laws to prohibit such behaviour. Yet the prisoner still has his day in court in a working justice system, the presumption of innocence still intact.Report
Thanks Blaise and Shaz,
As I have said before, a minimally fair game is one that people agree to the rules before it starts. In other words, it is a game they agree to join, knowing the rules.
A really fair game is one where they agree to the rules and have competing rule sets to choose from before the game starts.
In other words, I define fairness not by the details of the game , but based upon the methodology of choosing to play.
But I am often wrong.Report
As an example, a fair program system would be one that a group of experienced programmers would agree to before they learned what it is that they are spcifically programming. It is what they would choose impartially behind the veil.Report
The rules have to evolve, though. Look at the problem we’re getting into with concussions in football. Or look at the evolution of the three-point line in basketball. Yes, we need to know the rules before we get in the game but if we want a better game, we need better rules.Report
Heh, heh. A programmer isn’t going to agree to anything before he gets a spec. Even experienced programmers don’t know how a system will behave until they begin to test its components. Rawls won’t work here. If there’s a veil of ignorance, instrumenting and performance tuning tears it down.
Now, capacity planning, that’s something an experienced programmer would need to understand. But that’s a speciality: he’s highly unlikely to make those capacity planning decisions. He wouldn’t, anyway, knowing he’s no fair judge of his own thinking, to the point where most programmers don’t like to test their own code. Fair is contextual.
That said, there are some aspects of programming which don’t seem improvable any more. These we call Software Design Patterns.Report
Agreed, rules need to evolve. However, as they evolve we need to ensure they stay impartial — that they not be rewritten in ways which allow some programmers to exploit the situation.Report
I’m afraid that doesn’t make sense in the context of programming. Programming languages, indeed all computer technology, evolved to solve problems. If there’s any exploitation going on, it’s the managers who insist on handing out Drop Dead Dates but won’t participate in the development of the solution.
Though I’m not a big fan of the Agile development methodology (I have my own) there’s one good thing about how it operates. Do something small, make sure it works, do some more, make sure that works — lather, rinse, repeat. What matters is that the stuff works simply and reliably, not that it’s conformal to every blessed rule in the book. Furthermore, some tools are more appropriate than others. Solve the problem people really have, not the ones you think they might have.
It’s tough, writing simple code. There aren’t any guidelines to this stuff. There are seventeen ways to solve the same problem. It’s more important that people understand what’s being done so they can identify fallacies and simplistic assumptions before they cause trouble. Overcompensation in these things causes more trouble than almost anything else in software.Report
Hey Roger,
I think that makes you a Nozickean, through and through:
From easy-pedia on Nozick:
‘Nozick’s famous Wilt Chamberlain argument is an attempt to show that patterned principles of just distribution are incompatible with liberty. He asks us to assume that the original distribution in society, D1, is ordered by our choice of patterned principle, for instance Rawls’s Difference Principle. Wilt Chamberlain is an extremely popular basketball player in this society, and Nozick further assumes 1 million people are willing to freely give Wilt 25 cents each to watch him play basketball over the course of a season (we assume no other transactions occur). Wilt now has $250,000, a much larger sum than any of the other people in the society. The new distribution in society, call it D2, obviously is no longer ordered by our favored pattern that ordered D1. However Nozick argues that D2 is just. For if each agent freely exchanges some of his D1 share with WC and D1 was a just distribution (we know D1 was just, because it was ordered according to your favorite patterned principle of distribution), how can D2 fail to be a just distribution? Thus Nozick argues that what the Wilt Chamberlain example shows is that no patterned principle of just distribution will be compatible with liberty. In order to preserve the pattern, which arranged D1, the state will have to continually interfere with people’s ability to freely exchange their D1 shares, for any exchange of D1 shares explicitly involves violating the pattern that originally ordered it.
Nozick analogizes taxation with forced labor, asking the reader to imagine a man who works longer to gain income to buy a movie ticket and a man who spends his extra time on leisure (for instance, watching the sunset). What, Nozick asks, is the difference between seizing the second man’s leisure (which would be forced labor) and seizing the first man’s goods? “Perhaps there is no difference in principle,” Nozick concludes, and notes that the argument could be extended to taxation on other sources besides labor. “End-state and most patterned principles of distributive justice institute (partial) ownership by others of people and their actions and labor. These principles involve a shift from the classical liberals’ notion of self ownership to a notion of (partial) property rights in other people.”
IMO, Nozick was a genius. The view is wrong (IMO), and extreme (Cookoo, I say), but intellectually honest, and that earns my respect. Big time.
Not sure how you can say that there are some times that is okay to, so to speak, take Chamberlain’s money and still be a libertarian. (You can say it doesn’t apply to children, but Nozick is explicitly talking about people who can enter into contracts, so he thinks that it doesn’t apply to children.) If you accept that there are other principles, that indicate that you should sometimes, so to speak, steal from Chamberlain, then we are owed an account of what they are.
IMO, if you accept any such principles, and remain logically consistent, you will not end up as a libertarian, except only in the loosest sense.Report
Shaz,
I have no idea if I am a Nozickean. Obviously he and I both lean in the classical liberal direction, so we are probably aligned in many ways.
Actually I like where Rawls starts. I think he then just tries to logically work out what type of society people would choose. I would just ask people to actually choose using hypotheticals or structured set ups. I would then let them see how well they chose and revise choices later on. In other words, I would allow them to learn from history. In other words, he over thought it.
I think a lot of people would choose something like Sweden or the US. Some one and some the other. I approve of whichever they choose.
If when all is said and done people determine I am not really a libertarian, then so be it. It is only a useful and inexact label.
As for when it is OK to take Wilt’s money, it is Ok when he agreed up front to the game. He can do this by choosing to live in the state that he lives in with the rules that he lives under.
Today there is very little choice. It is very difficult to leave ones country of birth. But that is the cards we have been dealt. He can still take it or leave. In a better and more fair world, there would be more choice and easier entrance and exit and all of my writing reflects that.
The world we have is pretty damn good. I believe we can learn how to make it better.Report
it’s unfair to ascribe things you don’t believe to you specifically
Unfair? I’m more inclined to argue that it’s unproductive at best and intentionally dishonest at work. And the issue with dishonesty isn’t fairness, it’s trust.Report
@Shazbot,
Not sure how you can say that there are some times that is okay to, so to speak, take Chamberlain’s money and still be a libertarian.
This is where I lose you. You treat libertarianism as a binary variable–like a light switch, either on or off. But what is your basis for declaring that the distinction between a libertarian and a non-libertarian is whether one is an absolutist about redistributive taxation? You have not explained why that is the definitive basis, beyond saying, “Well, Nozick was a libertarian, and he was an absolutist about redistributive taxation.” But that’s not definitive. Certainly not unless you can demonstrate why Nozick is the sole authority on libertarianism, and I’m not sure how you can do that without making an appeal to authority.
Here’s my distinction between a liberal and a libertarian, although I’m not taking the time I ought to phrase it carefully.
— Do you think the market is over-rated and we ought to be more willing to look to government solutions? You’re probably a liberal.
–Do you think government is over-rated and we ought to be more willing to look to market solutions? You’re probably a libertarian.
That makes it all operate on a continuous, rather than binary, variable. Like volume. When does volume become loud? There’s no definitive objective answer to that, but we can readily determine when one thing is louder than another. Same with liberalism and libertarianism; we may not always be able to perfectly distinguish whether someone is truly a liberal or truly a libertarian, but we can generally determine whether one person is more libertarian or more liberal than another.
But as long as you insist it must be binary, and that it must be based on some distinction between an absolutist position and a non-absolutist position, it makes no sense to me, and I don’t think you can logically justify why it must be that way.Report
By “principles of justice” or “account of fairness” I don’t mean anything sophisticated or complex. I just mean this: You must follow some method for determining what a good distribution of goods looks like that we ought to aim our policies at achieving, i.e. what ends we should be aiming at in policy.
If you don’t have such a method, no one -not even God- can argue that you should not advocate for such and such policies as opposed to other policies, because a policy is only good for bringing about a certain end. If we don’t know what that end is according to you, you can shift the end around in different conversations and you will never be shown to be wrong.
And a person should always hold views that could be proven wrong. This is the mistake that conspiracy theorists and creationists make; they refuse to specify the evidence that would show that they are wrong. I admit that it is harder when we are talking not about policy but about principles of justice to think about what would show that we are wrong, but you must recognize that your view has a problem in that we can’t possibly even show that you are wrong to believe that a certain policy is good, because we don’t even know what you mean when you call the policy “good.”
I am worried that Stillwater has the same problem. IMO, “I will use pragmatics to figure out what to do” means the same thing as “I have no idea why I am doing this but it seems good in some unspecifiable way.”Report
I am worried that Stillwater has the same problem.
What problem is that? I had a longish response to this which I deleted because I realized I don’t know specifically what you’re talking about.
Could you give me an idea what you’re thinking of?Report
You must follow some method for determining what a good distribution of goods looks like that we ought to aim our policies at achieving,
aesthetics?
efficiency?
power?
minimal degree of perversity in the outcome? (e.g., whatever the intended outcome, it actually achieves it rather than creating incentives that prevent its achievement)
comedic effect?
Is a fairness standard actually unavoidable, or is it just a normative choice?Report
By “principles of justice” or “account of fairness” I don’t mean anything sophisticated or complex. I just mean this: You must follow some method for determining what a good distribution of goods looks like that we ought to aim our policies at achieving, i.e. what ends we should be aiming at in policy.
Can my fairness rule be the sports official rule? E.g., the rules are minimally designed for a competitive game, and everyone abides by them equally–and the officials call the game equally for both sides–regardless of who wins? So if it’s the Miami Heat playing the Ottumwa, IA, junior high Bulldogs, it’s just tough shit for the kids that they’re not as experienced, as fast, as big, or as talented? And the only reason we change the rules is if one team starts always beating everybody (we’ll call it the Montreal Canadians exception), but there’s no rules changes because we feel sorry for the Ottumwa Bulldogs? But if the Miami Heat start giving them wedgies without getting called for it, then we know we need to work on the officials.Report
I think you have to address the root cause rather than punishing the outcome.Report
You have to be courteous for $7.25. If you were making 100 times that, you could be an utter fishing a-hole, and people would gush about what a great leader you are.Report
I stopped reading when the commentary tangented off to teachers, etc.
Let’s look at labor pay for work at fast food places.
Order taking-basic english comprehension
Order input-push button image of item customer orders
“Cooking”-More of an assembly line vs real food preparation. I believe all the stuff is prepackaged, frozen, etc.
Take money/give change-machine tells you amount of order, machine tells you amount to return, so basic counting needed.
Cleaning of restaurant.
Am I missing anything? This skill level is not exactly high. It doesn’t require a college degree, probably not even a high school cert or a GED. You’re asking a business to pay 13 more dollars an hour for a “living” wage, assuming that amount is @ 40K a year. Really? The marginal increase in labor costs far exceeds the employee’s VALUE for the work they are performing.Report
The marginal increase in labor costs far exceeds the employee’s VALUE for the work they are performing.
They should be paid for their intrinsic worth. It’s society’s responsibility, and we’re appointing Ronnie McD to fulfill it for us.Report
In my marxist-sympathizer days (even though I had and still have only a rudimentary knowledge of what marxism is), I would have responded to your and Damon’s comments with something like the following:
Now that I’m not a marxist-sympathizer, I don’t agree with much of that. I reject the notion that labor creates all “value” (even though I think labor creates something valuable) and I disagree with the notion that the “value” that labor creates is sufficient justification for all or most claims on behalf of workers.
But I still have some sympathy for the proposition that a strong union–if it’s run by the workers on the ground–might help improve the daily life of many of the fast food workers.
A raise to $15 an hour is either not going to happen, or would be disastrous if it did happen. Maybe a more modest wage increase might work better, albeit with some negative consequences (“everything comes with a cost.”)
Damon’s probably right about the marginal value the workers contribute at the typical fast food locale. He is probably also right about the list of things workers there have to do.
I might add another “skill,” and that is being able to do those things day after day at the same place or a very similar place of work. I’m not going to go all maudlin and say “oh, survival is the skill that counts most,” but many of those workers (not necessarily the middle-class and affluent working-class teenagers, but those who are going to be doing this type of work for the rest of their lives) live in a reality that I, for one, do not fully know although I know that at least a few people here have had a deeper glimpse into that life than I have.
I have to resist the urge to ascribe to them a moral superiority simply because they are less well off, but I do think there is something honorable about working in such places that is often very easy for someone like me (and for people like many of my middle-school and high school teachers) to deride.
If you permit me to get unconscionably personal, my early years working in such places really had a strong effect on me and probably played no small role in what eventually became my short-lived sympathy for marxism. I was one of those affluent working-class people who had the skills and privileges to know that I wouldn’t be working there forever. But I remember one of the first things I noticed was how hard the job was (what my teachers had called “merely flipping burgers” was more demanding than “merely flipping burgers”). In retrospect, I realize that all I really discovered was that work is generally hard, and that just because I found one job hard doesn’t mean that others weren’t more difficult or difficult in different ways. I was also able to meet and see a lot of working-poor people more as persons, with their own hopes and failings and virtues, and less as the caricatures I grew up thinking they were.
I guess this is one of the reasons why, in spite of the very good arguments against raises for fast food workers and against unionization (I do realize that just because a job is hard is probably not by itself a good reason for a high wage), and in spite of my migration away from marxism, I still have much sympathy for these unionizing efforts, and my knee jerks occasionally when I meet the opposing arguments. (Take, for example, the ad hominem attack I made in one of my comments above.)Report
I’ll repeat again that we’re not talking about the government subsidizing them because they aren’t making a living wage. The government already does that!
What we’re talking about is consumers supporting unionization and holding fast food management more accountabe for its employees instead of the rest of society being burdened with the cost via the welfare state.
Instead we’re arguing points that were never made or are intractable, instead of realizing that the whole fast food corporate labor structure is designed to benefit off government assistance for the poor.
Our society in general could use a wake-up call here.Report
the whole fast food corporate labor structure is designed to benefit off government assistance for the poor.
This is becoming a meme here lately, but I still don’t see it. If the government stopped giving assistance to the poor, there’s no reason businesses would pay them more, as far as I can see. The workers would be in even more desperate straights, less well-positioned to bargain (because the option of just quitting is even less realistic), and the bargaining power of the corporation effectively increased.
If anything, it seems to me gov’t assistance to the poor will increase wages marginally, by making it safer for people to say, “Fish you, you’ll have to pay me more to persuade me to take that job, because at least I have my government assistance, as piss poor as it may be.”Report
That’s only one side of the equation. A large portion of these sorts of companies’ business comes from the very people they’re paying below subsistence level wages. The only reason those people can buy fast food, or shop at Walmart, is because in addition to their measly wages, they have government assistance. So, Walmart and McDonald’s benefit doubly: they get to pay people less because the government will make sure that they can eat and have a home (in most cases — people slip through those cracks too), and they get a large customer base that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
This is one more thing that was discussed at length in the Walmart thread, of course. That it’s being rehashed here is more evidence that “Somalia! Pinochet!” “Oh yeah? Stalin! Mao! Sweden!” are more productive responses.Report
Also, Walmart/McDonald’s get the benefit of high turnover (in some areas, well over 100%). Of course, who wants to keep workers with little or no motivation or loyalty, right?Report
If the government stopped giving assistance to the poor, there’s no reason businesses would pay them more, as far as I can see.
All other things being the same … Exactly Right!!! They’d hire people in the same circumstances and continue to offer them less than full time work with no benefits. In fact, without government subsistence, wages might even go down since the desperation level would increase! (Except for the minimum wage law that’s still in effect.) As it is, of course, subsidies obtain, and firms leverage against that to provide optimal (from their pov) compensation packages. Non-benefit-qualifying hours, rates of pay designed to keep subsidies flowing to employees, etc.
But let me ask you a serious question: if subsidies were eliminated, what do you think would happen? Seems to me in that according to “market principles”, wages would likely go down, to even less than their current below-subsistence rate. But in practice, there’d be all sorts of social movement to provide those employees with a living (or increasingly) wage. It might be unions, minimum wage laws, living wage laws, boycotts, etc.
The idea that wages wouldn’t go up, tho, just isn’t part of equation, from my pov.Report
Non-benefit-qualifying hours, rates of pay designed to keep subsidies flowing to employees, etc.
OK, there might be something there. That’s definitely worth thinking about.
I don’t know just what would happen if gov’t assistance was eliminated. But if wages went up, it wouldn’t be as straightforward as it seems to me almost everyone has been implying. So far it’s sounded to me like nearly everyone is saying, “Wal Mart would have to pay more just because the government was giving less,” which makes it sound like either a case of Wal Mart being more giving or them having to do it to keep their employees. Neither of those sound likely to me.
That’s why I’ve been pushing on this for a few days now, without success. Your is the first comment I’ve seen that actually discusses the mechanisms. And I just want to point out that they’re all non-Wal Mart mechanisms that are reacting to a non-Wal Mart policy change, and that one can hope will occur, but that won’t occur with absolute certainty (or, that is, will occur with varying probabilities and varying prospects for success, in different locales).
That’s not a critique of what you’re saying/asking. I think you’re right on target. But it makes clear that the “Wal Mart will have to pay more” is over simplistic, and may be based more on wishful thinking than any real ability to predict the future.
(I’ll also point out, gently, that it puts liberals in something of a bind, in that they’re essentially agreeing that one of their own preferred social policies is a prominent cause of the low wages they decry.)Report
And I want to add that the main point here is that all of this is inconsistent with libertarianism, which is that governmental intervention into market and individual activity is only justified by protecting negative rights. But here we have a case where the labor market and corporate profits are subsidized by coercive government action which isn’t justified by negative rights.
I really don’t see how a libertarian purist gets out of this. They either need to reject public subsidies (which will result – literally! – in people dying in the streets) or accept a higher minimum wage laws and/or unionization (which is inconsistent with their fundamental principles).Report
I really don’t know why anyone ever mentions libertarian purists to someone like me.
It’s like talking about a Platonic ideal of the feminine form to Picasso. This may not be my type of woman, but it is my type of libertarianism.Report
I meant that generously. It applies to you too, tho, given what you’ve written on this blog. At least, it seems to me.
You are a more leftist libertarian, I’ll admit. More pragmatically inclined and less concerned about the theory. So if I’m wrong about including you in that claim, I’ll admit the error. But I’m not arguing against James Hanley here, I’m arguing against a version of libertarianism that’s rigid enough to actually argue against.Report
I’m arguing against a version of libertarianism that’s rigid enough to actually argue against.
That’s kind of classic coming from the “I’ve got no a priori principles (except maybe fairness), I’m just pragmatic” liberal. That hardly seems very rigid, either, eh? So you subtly mock the non-puritan libertarian for being in roughly the same position you are. Maybe I should just go look for someone who’ll present a liberalism that’s rigid enough to actually argue against?
Really, though, if you don’t want to engage me where I’m actually at, and want to imply that I’m too wishy-washy (or something) to be argued against, then it’s probably time we stopped engaging with each other at all. I can’t see any good that will come of it. And frankly, I’m kind of tired of folks like you, Shazbot, M.A., and Jessie working so hard to define everything in terms of a pure or extreme libertarianism.
I’ve been feeling kind of “last straw”ish for a while. Let me know if you get past the need for your intellectual opponents to be far more ideologically rigid than you yourself are.Report
And frankly, I’m kind of tired of folks like you, Shazbot, M.A., and Jessie working so hard to define everything in terms of a pure or extreme libertarianism.
Well, thanks for the info. Much appreciated. I don’t know why you expect any of us to do anything differently when talking about “libertarianism” to you. We’re not interested in an idiosyncratic view, but the general theory. If your view is idiosyncratic, then I think the burden is on you to be patient with your interlocutor. (It being non-standard and all.)
But really, why all the defensiveness? I don’t think your theory is sound. I haven’t wavered on that since I first started commenting here. But now you want to say that you critiquing you for holding a “theory” is uncharitable. WTF?
I’ll concede that all other things being equal, more liberty is better than less. Is that what libertarianism amounts to?
Count me in.Report
I’m interested in a pure liberal theory, not your idiosyncratic “it’s just pragmatism” approach. Matthew 7:3. At least Shazbot runs on Rawls, eh?
Defensive? Heh. In reference to a discussion I had with Shazbot the other day, someone else here at the League (a non-libertarian) emailed me this:
So maybe I am getting a bit defensive. But given that the “it’s either pure or it’s not really libertarian” game has become noticeable to others, maybe there’s some justification.
Anyway, I’m tired of playing the game. There was a time when I thought you were actually listening and wanting to engage in an actual conversation. I’ve come to conclude that I was wrong. It seems to me that you admit as much in your comment at 3:51–you want something to argue against.
Have fun with it. I hope you find it gratifying.Report
Dammit, that blockquote should have ended after “regular thing.”Report
(as Clouseau) The problem is sol-vayedReport
Sorry that you got that attack email, James. It wasn’t me. I appreciate our clashes and hope I don’t sound as aggressive as that emailer.
I am usually wrong about everything, so there is a good chance that Hayek and Nozick and eveyone but me is right about everything.Report
Shazbot,
I must not have been clear. That was not an attack email, but a sympathetic email. Someone noticing that certain liberals here are playing the same game over and over, the “Oh, so you don’t think we should all end up in Somalia, then I must have persuaded you away from libertarianism” game. And I know who sent it; I just didn’t want to out them.
Really, Shaz, if you could just get over the need to define me into a satisfactory cubicle, and stop thinking in terms of a “pure libertarian/liberal” dichotomy, you’d have the chance to listen to what I’m actually saying. That’s not to say you’d start agreeing, as wonderful as that would be. It just means you’d actually start hearing me, instead of some mental heuristic you’ve got in place to help shuttle people into categories {A….Z}.
I’m not an extremist libertarian. I’m not a liberal. Most variables in the world aren’t binary. And there’s not a damn person in the world who’s perfectly consistent in applying all their principles, except for a handful we all run from in terror because they’re fishing psychopaths.Report
Thank you, Blaise. I appreciate the help.Report
Re” the email exchange, I think I know what conversation was. I didn’t say I changed your mind. I said you ended up agreeing with what I was arguing for. (Tho it’s nice to know that you libertarians keep tabs in private about how liberals are misrepresenting your views. By misrepresentation, of course.)
Here’s how that conversation went. (Go look it up if you don’t believe me.) Libertarians were accusing liberals of not having principled limits on subsidies. That seems entirely obvious to me, because welfare limits can’t have principled limits, so I asked libertarians what principles justify their limits on bennies. You wrote that there are principled limits (need), and then changed your mind to saying they were pragmatically determined.
Which was my point!
As for the little email exchange, I certainly wish the person who wrote it responded to me with that accusation, since I could have pointed right to the comment thread where you in fact changed your mind of your own volition.
And I should mention that the person who wrote you that also said (if it’s the person I’m thinking of) the you never disagreed that bennie limits are pragmatically determined. Which is entirely counterfactual.Report
There was a time when I thought you were actually listening and wanting to engage in an actual conversation. I’ve come to conclude that I was wrong.
There was a time when you pinned all your hopes on me, eh? And now that time has sorrowfully past, and your dream, small tho it was, lies in shattered pieces on the ground.
Oh well.
Maybe things would have turned out differently if you had better arguments.Report
I just noticed this.
I’m interested in a pure liberal theory, not your idiosyncratic “it’s just pragmatism” approach. Matthew 7:3. At least Shazbot runs on Rawls, eh? ‘
What is a “pure liberal theory”, as differentiated from just pragmatism, if not a theory constructed on rigid principles?
What the hell are you talking about anymore bro? You say want a theory of rigid principles, and then say (down thread, I think) that you don’t embrace a theory of rigid principles. Here, I’ll find the quote:
You’ll never find a quote from me arguing for rigid principles.
And while talking out of this side of your mouth, you tell me out of the other that my version of pragmatism is an ideological and based on a priori first principles?
Which is it man? Either you have a first principle-based theory of political economy or you don’t. I have a pragmatic based theory ov political economy, warts and all. And I admit the warts!
Jimeny Christmas!
{{Btw, I’ve read Rawls…}}Report
My bad. I always assume someone is not attacking me, even when I am being a fishing dink (which I usually am).
I feel bad that the anonymous emailer hates my guts. But the show must go on!Report
Stillwater,
A) The email wasn’t referencing an exchange between you and me. I made that clear already.
B) The email wasn’t from another libertarian. I made that clear already.
Two strikes.Report
Good God. Isn’t the rule three strikes and you’re out, James?
Holy shit! Thanks for the heads up.Report
I thought the rule was that we each ought to strive for at least a minimum level of reading comprehension. I know I don’t always write with perfect clarity, but I do think “a discussion I had with Shazbot” and “(a non-libertarian) emailed me this” can’t reasonably be interpreted as “a discussion I had with Stillwater” and “(a libertarian) emailed me this.”
Oh, and as to your 7:50 p.m. comment, re: “pure liberal theory,” I wasn’t being serious. I was mocking your “pure libertarian theory” line. We’re all so hot around here now that all the snark is going unrecognized. Or it could just be that my delivery sucks today–at least three jokey comments I wrote today were taken as serious, at which point it seems likely the problem is my writing. So on that one I’ll take the blame for lack of clear snarkiness.Report
I thought the rule was that we each ought to strive for at least a minimum level of reading comprehension.
Eh, so I made a mistake. You quoted a commented directed at me with “you” in the text. I was confused.
I think we’re beyond apologies at this point, tho.Report
I haven’t read the rest of the comment, so forgive me if you end up answering this later on, but you wrote
That’s kind of classic coming from the “I’ve got no a priori principles (except maybe fairness), I’m just pragmatic” liberal.
as if that’s some sort of decisive criticism. I’ve admitted that liberals don’t rigid a priori principles. Libetarianism is osetnsibly a theory which actually has some rigid principles, otherwise why do you feel justified in criticizing liberals for lacking them?
I take it as a given, and I could track down quotations from you demonstrating this, that libertarianism is distincguished from contemporary political liberalism by the existence of rigid principles.
So why do you insist (over and over and over) on criticizing me for something we apparently both already agree on?Report
I could track down quotations from you demonstrating…that libertarianism is distincguished from contemporary political liberalism by the existence of rigid principles.
You’ll never find a quote from me arguing for rigid principles. I believe principles are incommensurate and none has an ultimate trump.Report
Fine. I’ll accept that. As far as it goes.
But why do you then continually criticize liberals for a lack of principles? Do you want me to link the thread where you said that your rejection of liberalism was due to a recognition that liberals don’t have any (rigid) principles upon which policy is based? I could, even with my weak google fu.
I mean, this Hanley versus liberals thing has become ridiculous. You think we’re continually, repeatedly, uncharitably misrepresenting your views, apparently because you don’t believe in rigid principles. Yet every criticism of a liberal is a pointed attack on liberals lack of identifiable, clearly statable, rigid principles. I mean, I’ve given you one – fairness – and then you reject that! Do you see why this is frustrating to the people you’re arguing with? You’re a moving target man!Report
Via Volokh, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson:
http://www.volokh.com/2012/11/30/whitewashing-the-early-twentieth-century-progressives-part-10-billion/Report
Yet every criticism of a liberal is a pointed attack on liberals lack of identifiable, clearly statable, rigid principles.
Really? That’s all I ever criticize liberals for? That’s funny, given that I’ve repeatedly stated that I am skeptical about your claim that liberalism lacks principles. My point in that skepticism all along has been that I suspect liberals do have more in the way of principles than you think they do.
I could be wrong, of course. But when I keep saying I think liberals really do have more principles than you think they do, it’s quite a stretch to say that my “every” criticism of them is that they lack principles.
I mean, I’ve given you one – fairness – and then you reject that!
I don’t like the fairness principle. I never said it wasn’t a liberal principle, or your principle. I didn’t realize I had to personally accept your principals to understand what they are.
I can’t believe how unbelievably silly this is getting. Why don’t you just write me off as I’m writing you off–after all our discussions we’ve gone exactly nowhere. We’re not doing us nor anyone else any good by continuing our discussions. Let’s you and I talk about anything except liberalism and libertarianism, and if we can’t avoid this topic let’s not talk. Feel free to remind me of this when I (inevitably) forget.Report
Feel free to remind me of this when I (inevitably) forget.
Sure. Will do, James.Report
Well let’s take caps on hours worked for one. These are just below the point where companies would be required to provide benefits, which instead are supplied by government in the form of public insurance and other welfare initiatives.Report
Thus further reducing the supply of jobs. Part of the reason there are fewer jobs is that we demanded outrageously priced benefits that were outrageously over built, and which handed out goodies to every rent seeking special interest group. We priced lower skilled workers out of the market. Cause and effect.
This really gets frustrating. We have thread after thread where the left asks for Cadillac insurance with free contraception passed on to the evil employer. Then when this leads to fewer jobs according to economics 101, those on the left decry that there are no good jobs available.
I know you are not of the left, Christopher, but laws prohibiting part time work and thus forcing overbuilt benefits is not going to help who you think it will. IMO.Report
That’s why I don’t support such laws. And again, I agree with what you’re saying about the minimum wage.
That’s why I didn’t write a post about that topic, and it’s why I did write one about supporting collective bargaining for New York fast food workers.
It’s also why I’ve continually said throughout this thread that I support consumer-driven reform.Report
I loledReport
It’s almost as though these 2 threads never happened. You get to the end of the second one, and people are saying the same shit.
At this point, I feel less bad about people answering libertarians with “Somalia!”Report
Yawn. And you want Stalin’s Russia.Report
I’m not so sure. Libertarianism can be broadly viewed as a theory the thesis that rights can only be coercively violated by government if doing so protects basic rights. That leads to a minimal state of cops and courts, of course, since the coercive constraint of violations of other people’s rights is necessary for people to act on those rights. Fraud and perhaps other regulations that aren’t obviously justified (like environmental externalities or whatnot) are justified by the same broad argument. The theses following from this premise is that a society which limits government intrusion in social life to only the protection of basic rights will lead to the best outcomes. And it does so according to two metrics. The first is that such a society maximizes individual liberty (where liberty is usually understood to mean “freedom from state coercion). The second is that it maximizes rational individual action based on preference and free, voluntary choice. Point two is often (it seems to me) viewed as entailing another normative conclusion which justifies limiting government: that maximizing the domain of rational, free choices individuals can make will lead to the best economic outcomes (where economic outcomes is understood to mean “maximizing subjective utility”).
These two – or three, of you include the corollary – theses are what distinguishes libertarianism from other types of political theories, it seems to me. They’re necessary conditions for the theory (or its idealized realization, in any event). So any violation of them – either in principle or in practice – constitutes a challenge to the legitimacy of the theory.
These threads – this one and the Walmart thread – have in effect presented a challenge to the libertarian model of best outcomes, and have done so in two ways. One is at the empirical level, which has two components. On the supposition that a living wage constitutes a best outcome entailed by the theory (I’ll come back to this below), the failure of an economic model to realize that condition constitutes an inconsistency in the theory, one that requires a remedy. And in the case of Walmart and fast food firms, living wages aren’t being paid. The recourse at that point is to find out why the model is breaking down. Is it caused by, for example, government intervention into the wage-market in the form of subsidies to the poor? If so, then the remedy – entailed by the main theses – ought to be to eliminate subsidies to the poor on the supposition that doing so will lead to best outcomes. Alternatively, is it caused by a lack of union presence amongst service industry workers to push wages up higher? Or a too-low minimum wage? Then the remedy ought to to be to permit/impose one of those two conditions (this move is pretty obviously inconsistent with the main theses).
Another part is that insofar as the cure for below-subsistence wages is thought to be worse than the condition, then a libertarian is conceding that his basic principles won’t lead to best outcomes, since the status quo effectively requires a coercive taking of income from taxpayers to support government intervention into markets. Importantly, it seems to me, is this argumentative path leads to the conclusion that the standard by which best outcomes are measured by is no longer an idealized model – since one of the fundamental principles of the model (no coercive intervention except when justified by basic rights) is violated – but rather context sensitive pragmatics.
Returning to the idea of a living wage, it might be said that a living wage isn’t a criterion by which “best outcomes” ought to be, or in fact are, measured. If so, then I think it’s at this point – so early in the game! – that a liberal would get off the libertarian bus. A living wage (not living income) ought to be a normative goal of any economic theory. (Provision of a living income, on the other hand, seems to me like a necessary condition for any coherent economic theory.) In fact, any robust theory which doesn’t include that as a necessary condition doesn’t seem (to me) like a theory justified by best outcomes.
And taking this one step further, it seems to me a living wage is entailed by libertarian theory in it’s idealized form: free markets and free access to markets entails, in principle, that a job will pay a living wage (for that area). (Notice what I’m not saying here: that libertarianism entails that an individual will receive a living wage.)
But that’s not the case. Walmart and fast food restaurants offer jobs that pay below living wages for probably every location in the US. Unionization is one way to increase wage rate, a rate which will better reflect the real (unsubsidized) price of retail goods as well as reduce/eliminate the interventionist role government plays in subsidizing cheap retail prices.
Of course, the alternative is to eliminate subsidies to the poor.Report
SW,
Pretty good stab at defining The libertarian position, IMO. I however do not agree that any exception or violation, constitutes a challenge to the legitimacy of the theory. Reality is too messy and complicated for any rules of thumb to work perfectly. If I put nine red balls and one white ball in a sock and have you predict which color you will draw randomly, red is the best choice in most cases, but it won’t always be right in every case. Just saying….
I do not understand why you assume paying a living wage is better than paying the market rate. The model is not breaking down, because we never assumed every job that should be offered should pay a living wage. To make this assumption will in effect create a class of people unable to get jobs. This is because it will either price those jobs out of existence, or lead to high qualified people getting jobs they are overqualified for, and thus again leaving the less qualified sitting on their arses. Remember that not everybody looking for a job is looking for a living wage. Some are looking for supplementary funds. Retired workers looking to supplement their income, housewives, college kids, high school kids, illegal aliens, etc.
If government safety nets lead to people taking government subsidies and then supplementing their income with non living wage jobs, then this is indeed somewhat of a perverse incentive. The question though becomes what should we do instead? Not provide safety nets? Not allow those getting aid to work? Not allow companies to offer positions at below living wages?
My answer here is that there is no perfect solution. (kind of like the abortion debate). Each has tradeoffs. I believe the best approach is to separate the safety nets from the market. I could give more details, but it is probably off topic.
On the issue of unions. There is nothing a voluntary union can do to substantially lift wages. The only way to make a significant change is to empower someone to coercively force the monopoly of labor. Absent coercion, there will always be someone willing to undercut the union wage until it reverts back to the market rate. I do not support coercion in labor negotiations from either side.
“Another part is that insofar as the cure for below-subsistence wages is thought to be worse than the condition, then a libertarian is conceding that his basic principles won’t lead to best outcomes, since the status quo effectively requires a coercive taking of income from taxpayers to support government intervention into markets.”
First, Safety nets do not have to be funded via government coercion. We could establish voluntary insurance type mechanisms or mutual aid associations which accomplish the same thing. Second, we could create competing government entities that people signed up for that would allow everyone to choose the safety nets that best match their values. Finally, we could just agree that as a last resort we prefer to allow some coercion to fund safety nets, just as we do to fund infrastructure, courts and defense. This is not a refutation of classical liberalism, just anarchism, and none of us are anarchists.
“A living wage (not living income) ought to be a normative goal of any economic theory.”
Disagree, because not everyone is trying to live off a wage. See above. Those not trying to live off it shouldn’t be prevented from working.
Finally, I DO agree that our current safety nets are illogical and create bad incentives. I could suggest improvements to them to make them more generous, and less perversely destructive.
BTW, awesome comment. I wish more people would engage in actual dialogue instead of just mindless snarks.Report
Thanks for the praise Roger. I’ll luxuriate in that for a minute or two, since it’s a nice thing for you to say.
You wrote:
<i?I do not understand why you assume paying a living wage is better than paying the market rate.
Because if that was people’s only source of income, they’d literally be dying in the streets. (And before that stealing shit, smashing stuff up, setting off bombs…)
The model is not breaking down, because we never assumed every job that should be offered should pay a living wage. To make this assumption will in effect create a class of people unable to get jobs.
I think you have. If markets are open (free) and labor/capital movement is open (free) then any job will reflect a livable base wage (if it’s below the base wage then unemployed people will move out of the area to a “livable” one, or firms will move in to compete for “below market” wages, raising it up).
Remember that not everybody looking for a job is looking for a living wage.
Now you’re confusing individuals looking for employment or income with the jobs being offered to employees. Recall what I said about that:
“free markets and free access to markets entails, in principle, that a job will pay a living wage (for that area). (Notice what I’m not saying here: that libertarianism entails that an individual will receive a living wage.)”
My answer here is that there is no perfect solution. … Each has tradeoffs.
Which puts you firmly in the liberal camp, not the libertarian camp, it seems to me. We realize that there are no perfect solutions, then pick a preferred value and act according to it.
There is nothing a voluntary union can do to substantially lift wages. The only way to make a significant change is to empower someone to coercively force the monopoly of labor.
Agreed. Completely. And that, of course, is the point of unions. Tho I wouldn’t call it coercion. I’d call it “leverage”. The same property that management has over employees in any event. It’s a levelling of the playing field, in my view.
First … we could, … second … we could, … finally … we could…”
Agreed about that too.
Disagree, because not everyone is trying to live off a wage.
This is the same confusion mentioned earlier: I’m not talking about individuals, but about wages offered for jobs.
This may have been too quick, of course, but I hope that reveals where our disagreements on this lie. They run deep, I think. And that’s one reason we keep talking past each other. We’re not going deep enough.Report
SW,
People won’t be dying in the street if they are not dependent upon that job as their sole income. If we make every job a living wage job, we are in effect also eliminating jobs for those that want to supplement their incomes. Another reason people are not dying is they wisely built social safety nets, private or public so that this would not occur.
Thus I obviously don’t agree the world is better if all jobs are living wage jobs.
What else am I missing?Report
Then you’re committed to coercive measures of government being used to subsidize below livable wages and corporate profits. You’re probably not missing that part of it.
But if you accept that coercion can be used to achieve a pragmatic best outcome measured by a value, then you’re not arguing any differently than a liberal. So all the complaining about liberals lack of principles really needs to stop.Report
Somehow I suspect you are trying to drag me into your quarrel with James. No thanks.
I do indeed agree that as of today, the pragmatically best option is to use government to solve some problems. Government is a coercive institution, and thus should be used very sparingly or thinly. But until we find ways to replace it that are less coercive but equally or more effective, then use it we should.Report
I’m not trying to drag you into it. You’re consistent on at least the premises: that voluntary transactions ought to be maximized whenever they can.
Your inconsistent in saying that the non-coercion principle holds a privileged place in your theory, it seems to me, because you’re conceding that coercively imposed subsidies to retail prices (and wages and corporate profits) are pragmatically justified, because those coercive takings aren’t justified in turn by the non-coercion principle. It’s only because of prioritizing some other value that you that they are justified.
But that’s just pragmatics.Report
Pragmatics about the non-coercion principle, I mean. It’s defeatable when another prioritizing a different value leads to “best outcomes”.Report
I think you have. If markets are open (free) and labor/capital movement is open (free) then any job will reflect a livable base wage (if it’s below the base wage then unemployed people will move out of the area to a “livable” one, or firms will move in to compete for “below market” wages, raising it up).
One of the basic roles of a market is price discovery. That discovery will be determined by supply and demand fundamentals. I don’t see how that automatically leads to a livable base wage, especially in today’s market conditions where you can have potential workers lined up out the door to take minimum wage jobs.
Using the WalMart example and going back to a comments you and James made, even if public subsidies were taken off the table, WalMart wages wouldn’t go up. There would still be enough demand at the base wage rate that it is willing to pay to hire workers.
Maybe I am missing something here, but I don’t agree.Report
Dave,
The conclusions you draw about long lines for job offerings is a fact of the matter, now doubt. The question is whether that fact results from government intervention into market activity, or if it’s consistent with (or entailed by) the principles of open markets and open borders (and idealized flexibility of both labor and capital).
Seems to me that in the absence of government intervention, the labor market would attain a base level of wage-rates specific to geographical locations in which those rates would normalize and cluster around a living wage by virtue of supply/demand itself. As I wrote, if wages in region A are low enough relative to wages in area B, then capital – all other things being equal – has an incentive to move to area B, in effect raising the base wage rate. Labor surplus, according to the model, should be an incentive to capital (or etc) to offer value in exchange for work. So over time, in the absence of government intervention, wages should stabilize at level sufficient for people to “pay their own way”.
Think of it this way, in the form of a question: does the idealized model include as a necessary condition that income from workers must subsidize the cost of employment (that is, the price of the lowest paying job opportunities), or does it entail that all job offers are sufficient for each employee (not individual!) can be a full participant in the economy without those subsidies?
It seems to me that social programs are necessary from a practical pov: people find themselves temporarily out of work, or perhaps are unemployable for various reasons, and so on. The safety net is there to catch those folk. But in the idealized model, safety nets wouldn’t be logically necessary, or built into it. Employment rates would be enough, relativized to a region, of course.
In practice, however, the model breaks down for various reasons. Government intervention, wage stickiness, relative inflexibility of capital as well as labor, vagaries in resource provision, political instability in key regions (!), stuff like that.Report
The question is whether that fact results from government intervention into market activity, or if it’s consistent with (or entailed by) the principles of open markets and open borders (and idealized flexibility of both labor and capital).
I think it’s mostly the latter. In my perfect world, the low wage jobs would be taken by part-time employees that are either 1) just looking for a way to make a little extra money or by 2) teenagers or other people looking for entry-level work to use these jobs as a mean of developing skills and on-the-job experience.
What sticks in my side about this entire conversation is that I wish there were other options for people seeking full-time work. A lot of jobs that used to pay what you and I would probably agree to be living wages have either gone away or gone beyond our borders. With fewer opportunities in other sectors, people seem to be looking wherever they can for work.
I think given the supply/demand fundamentals in certain labor markets, I don’t see wages moving up or down in the absence of government subsidies. As you mentioned in another post, there may be a social movement aimed towards companies so wage increases can happen, but companies like WalMart have already been battling these movements for years with success. I’m not sure how much more social movements can acheive, at least at this moment.
Seems to me that in the absence of government intervention, the labor market would attain a base level of wage-rates specific to geographical locations in which those rates would normalize and cluster around a living wage by virtue of supply/demand itself.
Based upon a standard of living in a specific region, I think that’s basically right. When you say cluster, do you assume that some wages will fall below the livable base rate for an area?
As I wrote, if wages in region A are low enough relative to wages in area B, then capital – all other things being equal – has an incentive to move to area B, in effect raising the base wage rate. Labor surplus, according to the model, should be an incentive to capital (or etc) to offer value in exchange for work. So over time, in the absence of government intervention, wages should stabilize at level sufficient for people to “pay their own way”.
Corporate Finance 101 states that companies will invest capital if that investment will yield a return at or greater than the firm’s weighted average cost of capital. Keeping the cost structure under control is something companies want to do so if the opportunity presents itself and all other factors are constant, companies will prefer to invest in areas where lower wages can be paid as opposed to higher wages (i.e. auto companies setting up manufacturing facilities in the South or even WalMart). In other words, labor surpluses are a factor that goes into the decision to invest capital, but no company will simply invest capital on the basis of a labor surplus. WalMart is not going to cannabilize its sales in a market by opening another store on the basis that it can hire on the cheap. It doesn’t work that way.
Also, given a labor surplus (more workers than jobs), employers entering into an area still hold some measure of negotiating leverage over employees and may not need to pay more than the current market rate. It’s possible that there could be some upward movement to entice workers, but I don’t see how that could be significant. WalMart is not going to open new stores in markets and pay more than it has to for comparable jobs in the area.
I hate to sound like a theorist (since I am by trade a capital markets professional and prefer to employ my business knowledge as opposed to my political views), market fundamentals are going to determine what the appropriate wage rate is. In the low-wage markets, there is an abundance of labor and not enough jobs available. Capital is not going to invest further in these markets unless capital can profit from those investments (that’s capital’s incentive). Absent a labor shortage, a market function, wages aren’t moving up.
To your question about the ideal model, yes, on a level that considers dignity and compassion, I would love to see every able-bodied person that is out and gainfully employed making some semblance of a living wage without the need of government assistance to supplement their income. As Roger and James have pointed out, rightly in my view, the economics don’t support my ideal view of the world.
I see where your coming from, but what you see as breakdowns is what I see as a disconnect between ideal models and applied economics. I understand your point about models breaking down and agree with it in principle, but I keep coming back to James’ point about WalMart’s wages absent government subsidies. No one has made a convincing argument that they would go up. Without that, a fail to see how the subsidies represent a breakdown in the model. If it’s not a breakdown, then the market for low-wage workers is functioning the way it should under the circumstances (imperfect and frankly unfair circumstances).
I hope this helps…Report
Dave,
Yes, this helps. Alot. You wrote:
I see where your coming from, but what you see as breakdowns is what I see as a disconnect between ideal models and applied economics. I understand your point about models breaking down and agree with it in principle, but I keep coming back to James’ point about WalMart’s wages absent government subsidies.
Two things. I may have been using the term “breakdown” too loosely, since “disconnect” is much closer to what I meant to say. The models can’t break down but they can fail to be realized in application. I think the measure there is how well they correlate with evidence derived from the application of (some of) the basic principles. It seems to me – and this is one of the things I’ve been arguing – is that the idealized model cannot be practically applied. And you mention several of the central ways in which it isn’t (I’d be inclined to say can’t).
Second thing: I agree with James that eliminating subsidies wouldn’t raise wages for Walmart/fast food employees. If anything, I think they’d go down in the short term, since doing so would increase demand from previously subsidized people for any paying position. I also think that that state of affairs isn’t sustainable politically (in the broad sense of that word). People would organize, unionize, legislate, etc., to increase wage rates. So long term, rates would go up, it seems to me, via various mechanisms I’m quite comfortable with but I think others find abhorrent.
No one has made a convincing argument that they would go up. Without that, a fail to see how the subsidies represent a breakdown in the model. If it’s not a breakdown, then the market for low-wage workers is functioning the way it should under the circumstances (imperfect and frankly unfair circumstances).
Making the case that they in fact would go up if subsidies were eliminated can’t be convincingly shown because it requires either government intervention to stipulate a higher compensation package, or unionization to leverage a higher compensation package from management. (Or as Chris says in the OP, pressure from consumers.) There is no theory which shows that either option will logically or necessarily lead to the desired outcome. Empirical evidence doesn’t support the conclusion either, except as a possibility.
The prevailing view, tho, is that “open markets” ought to determine wage rates, and in the absence of subsidies millions of Americans earning “market wages” wouldn’t be able to sustain their own lives. (Prison might be a better option, ya know?) So if the prevailing theory entails those outcomes, then there’s something wrong with it, it seems to me.
And thanks for the lengthy, thoughtful reply. I’m only a weekend-economist – one weekend out of the year – but I’ve read enough to have dangerously
badincorrect ideas.ReportI mentioned before that the libertarian versus conservative/liberal divide is not simply a matter of arguing in bad faith or misrepresenting (even if a lot of that happens) but just a stark difference in value systems.
Notice how every single discussion always and everywhere returns to Econ 101, Chapter 1, page 1: “So you see, that as demand (x) rises, and supply (y) holds steady, price (z) will always rise…”
Its not because the libertarians are stoopid. They aren’t, they are very well read and erudite. But they literally see the world that way.
Negotiating for a:
a) car, b) gall bladder surgery, or c) job…
these are all just variations of the same thing, an economic transaction of buyer and seller. For libertarians, so long as the preconditions for a free market are met, the outcome – any outcome- is acceptable.
We could point out that the preconditions required for a free exchange can only be satisfied in the first instance, and almost never in the other two. But that argument doesn’t work, because it then leads to either a refutation (ah ha! so you did in fact agree with Aetna that gall bladder surgeries were not covered!) or it leads to more economic fundamentalism- (“if only there were no barriers to entry, like doctor licensing…”).
The libertarian disconnect from liberals and conservatives isn’t in the fine points of economic theory- its in what I call “economic triumphalism” where everything is subordinated to economic laws. Liberals and conservatives hold many things as sacred- human life, human dignity (including sexuality) , work, and so on.
In the conservative/ liberal view, the negotiation over sexual services, or a job, or an operation shouldn’t be allowed to be governed by economic laws; Its not that the laws of supply and demand don’t hold true; its that we don’t want them to govern, even if it produces an economic inefficient outcome.
Libertarianism, like most things, can’t be refuted from within its own framework of values; the underlying values are what most of us question.Report
I saw a quote from Skinner today that seems appropriate: “The rat is always right”.
If you set up a model and the rat doesn’t act the way you want the rat to, the problem is not with the rat. It’s with the model.
“But humans are not rats!”
Yeah.Report
But … the prisoners dilemma!Report
Iterate it. Iterate it again. And again.Report
That requires people to act rationally according to the iterated model. Do they? Isn’t each event a potentially new one for the actual agent? Aren’t there new agents who enter the game at every iteration?Report
That’s the wonderful thing about being a rat: being a rat doesn’t entail worrying about how one should be a rat. As Ortega would say, being a rat “presents no problem.” Being a human, on the other hand, presents all sorts of problems. To quote Ortega at more length,
The stone is given its existence; it need not fight for being what it is—a stone in the field. Man has to be himself in spite of unfavorable circumstances; that means he has to make his own existence at every single moment. He is given the abstract possibility of existing, but not the reality. This he has to conquer hour after hour. Man must earn his life, not only economically but metaphysically.
Or more economically, “Whether he be original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself.”
I bring this up because much of where we, that is those of us who’ve taken sides on unions and wages and markets and so on in these threads, even when we’re not aware of it (and clearly some of us are wholly unaware of it), are not bound simply by the empirical facts of markets and societies and governments and such. We also have values, with which we build theories, out of which we build models, all of which determine the meaning of facts.Report
Another awesome post,LWA
As I mentioned to SW, I am a consequentialist. If I perceive it as tending to lead to better results, then I support it. If selling sex and livers led to a better world, then yes I would support allowing people to sell them. If it leads to a worse world, then I would modify the rules until a better world emerged. In other words, markets are just one social institution for coordinating human activity. There are others. We often just disagree on which institution will work best.Report
I’m not sure we would agree on what constitutes “better results”.
For many people, the mere act of selling a human body, or body part, regardless of any other consequence, is a bad result.Report
I don’t ever plan on agreeing with everybody on what constitutes better results. Indeed I think the world is better because we have different hypotheses and values. Thus I promote tolerance and variety up to the point where conflict emerges. But you know that already.Report
I just now read this comment all the way thru, LWA. Echoing Roger, it is indeed an awesome comment.Report
Thirded.Report
That’s fair. It’s just that, at this point, both sides misrepresenting each other repeatedly, and unflinchingly, so I see no reason why we shouldn’t just say, “Stalin!” “Pinochet!” “Stalin!” “Pinochet!”Report
We prefer more sophisticated misrepresentations around here.
And Pinochet was not president of Somalia, silly.Report
Heh… Now there’s a libertarian ideal! Somalia run by Pinochet!
(In case it’s not obvious, I’m joking. I know this has been unclear to some in the past.)Report
But it does suggest a significant question–would Somalia actually be better off under a Pinochet? E.g., take Somalia at it’s worst (the alleged liber(dis)topia), and bring in Pinochet to take over. What would happen? Would things get better, worse?Report
I believe that was, in essence, what people said about Chile: sure, he’s not perfect, but Chile will be better off for having him. And economically, perhaps they are better off today for having had him. I’m not sure that justifies a Pinochet, though. You know, we could say the same for the Soviet Union. Overall, economically, the Soviet Union was much better off in 1953 than it was in 1922. Sure, some Kulaks got fucked, but hey, now they were a military and economic superpower, am I right?
In reverse, there’s a similar discussion to be had about Saddam Hussein in Iraq (one that’s taken place many times in the last 9 years, usually via shouting).Report
That depends on your order of precedence. Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, every time soldiers move into a landscape, their first task is to provide elemental security without all the niceties: looters are shot, etc.
Pinochet seized power, not in a Hobbesian State but in a quasi-Marxist state. There was talk of impeaching Allende but the military took matters in hand before Allende could be peacefully removed. To draw the analogy to Somalia, there were no warlords in Chile. Pinochet was the warlord, further destroying the rule of law, already badly damaged under Allende.
Would Somalia be better off with a dictator than anarchy? I’d say so. But there are dictators and there are dictators. As I’ve mentioned several times, Paul Kagame in Rwanda is a hard-nosed dude with little patience for the niceties of democracy but he is serious about putting his nation on a sounder economic footing.
When the USSR fell, two words went out glasnost == open government and perestroike == reform. China went for economic reforms where Russia went for the political reforms. Now Russia has a dictator and China suffers from endemic corruption.
More revolutions fail than succeed. But I’d say more succeed when they start with economic security than mere political freedom.Report
More revolutions fail than succeed. But I’d say more succeed when they start with economic security than mere political freedom.
I’m not qualified to judge the empirical validity, but that’s a helluva good hypothesis to ponder and investigate.Report
If a society gets on a sound economic footing, it will begin to demand more freedom. Economic soundness begins with the proposition of market stability, which depends on getting the robbers off the streets and out of the marketplaces.
China fears instability above all things. Anciently, they had a doctrine, the tian ming, the Mandate of Heaven. If a ruler governed virtuously, kept good order, the resulting stability demonstrated the Mandate of Heaven, for a ruler’s only guide in these things was the well-being of his state.
But if the rulers oppressed the people and tolerated corruption, the imbalances thus created would lead to chaos and all that followed was the loss of that Mandate of Heaven.
Once the people have some measure of contentment, which can only arise from a full belly and some measure of security, then they can begin to debate the niceties of political freedom, especially the toleration of dissent. These are important items in the larger scheme of things, but the Blessings of Liberty are dependent entirely upon a grounding of Domestic Tranquillity.Report
Out of curiosity, are the people who are opposed to higher wages for Walmart or McDonald’s employees, at least as long as the “market” (narrowly defined, at this point) doesn’t call for them, opposed to Walmart and McDonald’s employees unionizing and taking action collectively?Report
One of the recurring themes about the recent strikes at Wendy’s and WalMart was that organizing could get you fired. This is against the law, but it’s also hard to prove if there’s some other cooked-up reason for the dismissal. If it’s true (and I don’t know that it is, but it was certainly implied in the reporting) the businesses themselves take steps to prevent workers for organizing and demanding better wages and benefits. I’ve spoken with friends who worked at WalMart and described the anti-union indoctrinations they got upon hiring.
For seven days, workers at the LA docks have been striking at an estimated $1b/day. No wonder trying to organize is perceived as a firing offense.
But I’m sorry I cannot answer your question, because I think these corporations are immorally sucking at the public teat, and I’m astonished how difficult it is for some folk here to say that; instead they blame the workers, they blame the government. They blame everyone but the folks who write the paychecks and report to the stockholders.Report
Zic,
You aren’t trying very hard to understand us. We do not support teat sucking and would like the mom to stop offering her tit to the piglets. The Person writing the paycheck, to use your term, does a hell of a lot more for the worker than you or I do. They give them a job and pay them for it. I hardly even shop there. God bless employers and employees.
You do realize that the only way to pay an above market rate is to discriminate against people who are willing to do the same job for less, right? This means that what you are morally demanding Walmart to do is say no to those willing and able to do the job at a lower rate. Often this means old people and minorities.
If you understand that demanding substantially higher wages will reduce employment, increase unemployment with the least skilled, lead to higher skilled workers being misplaced into lesser skilled but overpaid jobs, thus leading to higher prices, more unemployment insurance costs, more welfare, racial disparities, and lower prosperity AND you still support it, then perhaps we just have wildly differing values.Report
Roger I understand perfectly well.
I have a very dear friend, a National Guard medic — she trains the folks who go to Afghanistan and Iraq in her medical unit. She’s been activated twice.
And she took a job as a manager at WalMart. Was hired full time with benefits, including health care, in six months. She worked full time for those six months, excepting the time she had to serve with her unit; something covered by USERRA. Then, magically, her hours were cut; she was now only needed for 30 hours a week. And didn’t qualify for health insurance.
Let’s be clear about this: that was not just a cut to wages via cutting her hours, it was also a cut to the amount they’d promised to pay her because she lost the benefit of the employer contribution and the tax-free dollars that would have paid for that insurance.
I have other friends, including single mothers, who have similar stories. As a reporter, I collected those tales for several years.
Now you claim this would lower overall employment. And I’ve read enough on these threads to have a very clear notion of the low regard people who work at these minimum wage jobs are given. Seems most of you arrogant sobs think these people are too stupid and pathetic to deserve humane wages, but that’s just an impression that’s growing from the way these people are described. I recall somewhere that you paint; how many painters work at WalMart or the like, how many musicians? A low-involvement job so that they can focus on their real vocation?
Anyway; a living wage means these same workers have more spending power. They can actually buy stuff they need, and maybe, stuff they want. And that’s good for the economy, it creates jobs. And they can do that without the government having to subsidize so much of their lives.
But the real problem here is not the amount of jobs, not the wages. It’s the redistribution of income, with low-wage workers receiving public subsidies benefitting the very richest amongst us. Take WalMart, where the heirs of Sam Walton own as much wealth as the bottom 40% of workers. That’s because that income redistribution has already happened, because they did not have to pay their workers reasonable wages, their suppliers reasonable rates, all so that you and I can go buy cheaper stuff. It sucks it all up, Roger.
Honestly, income inequality is the problem here. And you just don’t understand that that income inequality causes more welfare costs, more unemployment, more racial disparity because it is lower prosperity for all but the gilded few.Report
Zic,
This is not a conversation on whether a company engaged in deceptive bait and switch hiring. I don’t support that either. It is, as you ended your comment, all about your desire to influence wealth inequality. As for the comment that I only believe what I say because I am an “arrogant SOB”, I will just assume you don’t really mean it.
I am totally convinced that a substantially higher wage imposed upon Walmart and McDonalds would have catastrophically perverse effects on lower skilled workers. I am not just saying this. I am not a secret plant for the association of exploitative multinationals. This comes out of my interpretation of economics.
If you significantly raise the wages, what you think will happen is that unskilled people will make more. What I think will happen is that the demand for unskilled labor will shrink considerably. Furthermore, at substantially higher wages, you are in effect no longer paying unskilled rates. You are now playing skilled labor wages, and will attract skilled labor applicants. Walmart will thus replace its current workforce with skilled labor, thus over time leading to even more unskilled unemployment.
I truly believe that what you are asking will:
1. Lead to more unemployment
2. Lead to more systemic long term unemployment for the unskilled
3. Lead to greater inequality
4. Lead to further disparate impacts on economic success for minorities
5. Lead to lower class mobility
6. Lead to more spent on aid to the disadvantaged than today, not less
7. Lead to slightly higher prices, less capital investment, lower productivity and a lower average standard of living for us and all our descendants
In two weeks of arguing, nothing stated by anyone provided any convincing evidence to the contrary (perhaps excluding good debates on the sixth point). Thus, I could be wrong, but I assure you my motives are not driven by being an SOB.Report
I agree with Roger’s 3rd paragraph.
Economic studies of the effects of minimum wage have shown that they have negligible effects on prices, but they do have an effect on employment. Fast food joints, for example, tend to reduce their staff, and those who get eliminated are the least skilled. Any manager who has, say, 10 employees and has to reduce that number to 9 is normally going to get rid of their least productive employee.
At the Meijer in our town (a regional Wal Mart style store), there’s one checkout clerk who’s just terrible. She’s incredibly slow. But that’s because she has some kind of serious physical problem–she cannot stand up straight, so she is (apparently, anyway) permanently bent over from the waist up, which seriously hinders her mobility. She deserves a job as much as anyone else, but I doubt she’s really worth what they’re paying her now, much less if they paid her more.
I’m not saying you have to conclude that higher wages would be a worse outcome. I’m only asking that you recognize that not all the effects of higher wages are positive, and that the costs of it will fall on those least able to bear them. There is a reasonable argument that the net gain outweighs those costs, but let’s not mislead ourselves into being blind to those costs.Report
Roger has repeated this claim several times, but the empirical evidence for a drop in employment (or rise in unemployment) as a result of a rise in the minimum wage is cloudier than that. I know the classic study is the Brown et al. one from ’82, which showed a 1 to 3% drop in employment levels for teenagers, and a smaller drop for young adults, with a 10% raise in the minimum wage, but the more recent evidence has had a harder time showing precisely what the effect is. It looks like the most recent data suggests a small (small to very small, often not statistically significant) drop in employment, mostly at the most unskilled level (as you note). Some studies actually show an increase in employment, though there are probably methodological issues there.
And a small, temporary drop in employment levels has to be weighed against potential benefits.Report
I’m not arguing there’s a large and permanent drop in employment. I’m saying that it’s the least skilled who are likely to be eliminated, and who–because of their lack of skills–will have the hardest time finding new employment.
Sure, they probably will eventually, assuming the economy’s fairly robust. But it might take a long time, even at a slightly higher wage, to make up that lost income.
Yes, that cost has to be weighed against the benefits. That’s implicit in my statement, which was that the benefits (also) have to be weighed against those costs. I’m not saying what conclusion a person has to come to; I’m just saying let’s not pretend the policy is costless to all minimum wage workers. Or in other words, let’s just avoid that whole nirvana fallacy problem.Report
James, I definitely agree that it has to be considered, but it’s not all that should be considered. Roger has basically said that the two considerations in a rise in wages are profits and a drop in employment (in teenagers, I guess).Report
The question is, at its heart, whether it’s better to have two people working half-time or one person working full-time.
Note that if employers cut hours in half and hire twice as many people, that’s a 100% “job growth” result, because twice as many people are now working and employed.Report
DD,
only if you don’t count u6.Report
DD, that’s not the question, because that’s not a consequence.Report
Chris
This discussion and my comment above has not been aimed at small changes in minimum wage. It has been about converting minimum wage jobs into living wage jobs with full health care. That is why I qualified my statement with the word “significant.”
Thus the discussion is more about increases in the realm of double the market rate. At this rate you would on effect no longer be offering unskilled jobs. You would be paying for and attracting skilled labor. Thus qt this level we can all agree that less jobs will be offered and that any job still offered would now go to someone with higher skills.
The unskilled workers would be harmed.Report
If they’re opposed to higher wages for Walmart employees, why would they support unions? Unions are a means to that end, no?Report
Presumably, but then so are the businesses. I’m not sure that’s the right question. That’s why I’m asking if they are opposed to workers organizing and acting collectively: so that I can ask the right question(s).Report
Nobody’s opposed to higher wages at Wal Mart. It’s not the end that’s a problem, it’s what means are chosen. I’m rather ambivalent on unions; they’ve done me good and they’ve done me ill. I’ve variously refused to join, then joined and became a negotiator. It’s not impossible (although unlikely) that I could someday become our union president.
I think in a better world there are no unions, but that’s really up to the businesses. They bring unions on themselves. So I’m not particularly sympathetic to them either. One of the recurring confusions in this thread has been the assumption that you must either side with the workers and hate the corporation, or side with the corporation and hate the workers. Of course that’s just more of that binary thinking, the either/or, that is much too prevalent around here (heck, too prevalent around everywhere).
So do I support the workers’ right to organize? It’s hard for me to say definitively. It’s an issue I’m torn on. Let’s just say that they’re behaving like rational economic actors just as Wal Mart is.Report
Yeah, like I said, opposed to higher wages at Walmart except through the “market,” which Roger has pretty explicitly defined so as to exclude just about everything but businesses and the size of the labor pool.Report
Conservative Burt is very skeptical of unions. They are readily corrupted and inflate the value of labor beyond the results of what would be expected in an arms-length transaction between employer and employee. They create an artificially adversarial relationship between employer and employee that is socially and economically disruptive, in both the workplace and the marketplace.
Liberal Burt is very pleased that there are unions. Individual workers do not have the ability to negotiate the true market value of their labor with employers, and therefore accept less. Unions equalize that bargaining equation. The unregulated market on its own does not produce a result congruent with true economic equilibrium.
Libertarian Burt is deeply torn. Individuals should be free to associate as they wish and a voluntary union should be permitted. Closed shop (mandatory union membership) contracts deny individuals that choice. And in too many instances, unions obstruct the discipline and termination of workers who really do need to be terminated or disciplined.
Burt the Armchair Historian is horrified to read of the excesses of Gilded Age labor-management relations. He sees that the continued viability of unions is in no small measure due to the strength of the NRLA in tipping the legal scales in favor of unions, but realizes that without it, there would be nothing meaningfully preventing a return to the Bad Old Days.
Frustrated Burt wishes there was a better way to equalize the relationship between labor and management, but can’t think of one.Report
Libertarian Kim thinks that unions are needed as a counterbalance to the multinational corporations that are able to evade American labor laws. Libertarian Kim calls for global strikes, and says that unions need to evolve in order to survive, like any other entity.Report
Libertarian Kim doesn’t sound particularly libertarian to me. That doesn’t invalidate her opinion, it’s just a disagreement on nomenclature.Report
Libertarian Kim likes voluntary associations, and thinks that in an environment where unions are not protected by laws… well, unions never got nothing from the lawman anyhow.
Libertarian Kim’s anarchist streak may be showing. 😉Report
Oh for crying out loud.
They are readily corrupted and inflate the value of labor beyond the results of what would be expected in an arms-length transaction between employer and employee.
Says who? The employer?
They create an artificially adversarial relationship between employer and employee that is socially and economically disruptive, in both the workplace and the marketplace.
Really? Because the way I see it, there’s an infinitely more adversarial relationship between a nonunion employee and their employer. Lack of unions encourages much more job-jumping and much more antagonism from employees who feel their input in the workplace isn’t valued, which destabilizes the market. It also encourages through those mechanisms the standard conserva/tarian viewing of employees as mere, less-than-human replaceable cogs in a machine.
Conservative Burt’s opinions are bunk at best and raw propaganda at worst. The rest of it can stand on its own.Report
M.A.
Conservative Burt is not necessarily wrong.
Really? Because the way I see it, there’s an infinitely more adversarial relationship between a nonunion employee and their employer.
That is because you are only looking at it from one side. If I am a WalMart store manager (and no I don’t treat people the way I’m about to describe it), I don’t care how pissed off you are. I don’t care how little you think your input is being valued. I don’t care how much you hate me. You are a cog in my machine. You are here to do what I ask and if you so much as step out of line or do something against my store’s policy, your ass is out of here and I’ll have a replacement by the afternoon.
Mark has said it in other places in the past, but management values order over all. Organized labor can create an adversarial relationship by threatening this order in a way individual employees cannot. Is the term “artficial” the best way to describe it? I don’t know, but he’s not wrong.
Where you have an argument with Conservative Burt, assuming he believes this, is if Conservative Burt believes that this adversarial relationship is a bad thing.
Lack of unions encourages much more job-jumping and much more antagonism from employees who feel their input in the workplace isn’t valued, which destabilizes the market.
None of this destabilizes the market, especially in labor markets where employers hold all the leverage and where options are limited. Lack of unions may encourage job jumping, but if the only game in town is WalMart and people wouldn’t have any other jobs to jump to, what then? Isn’t this one of the primary reasons for the push to unionize WalMart and other service employees? They can’t jump jobs. That’s a problem for them.
It also encourages through those mechanisms the standard conserva/tarian viewing of employees as mere, less-than-human replaceable cogs in a machine.
Are you telling me that liberals wouldn’t view cashiers as replaceable employees? I think you’re reaching a bit here.Report
Are you telling me that liberals wouldn’t view cashiers as replaceable employees? I think you’re reaching a bit here.
Almost everyone is replaceable to some extent.
There’s a difference, however, between “Sorry to see you go, guess we need to put out a help wanted sign” and “Fuck you, you’re working at 7pm on Thanksgiving and you’ll smile and like it, we don’t give a crap if you have family, you’ll be here or we’ll get the next min-wage person and you can just rot.”
American employers are mostly the latter, soulless greedy scrooges.Report
I agree with everything that you said. Thanks for the clarification.Report
Conservative Burt is more likely to be persuaded to modify his assertions with some sort of evidence that a) unions are in practice not readily corruptible, and/or b) nonunionized workforces in practice produce similarly adversarial relationships with management.
The second request for evidence likely represents a more significant burden than the first. Lawyer Burt’s experience (representing, at various times, both employers and employees) has been that at least once unskilled and minimum-wage or just-above-minimum-wage positions are removed from the equation, employees and employers generally both want to find common ground and work together towards productivity and profitability. Typically, supervisors want to get along with workers and workers want to get along with supervisors. Consequently, they do get along and an identity of interests and a cohesion of desires will accrue over time. Workers take pride in their work and understand that their employers must be profitable in order for their jobs to have longevity. They do not need unions to tell them to do this. Employers naturally understand that workers must be productive and there is a threshold of compensation below which productive workers cannot be found. That threshold may not necessarily align with an externally-desired level of compensation.
As for “corruption,” Conservative Burt is concerned not so much about sweetheart deals between union and management as he is about the union valuing its own existence over the viability of the employer. Hostess provides one of many recent examples in which high labor costs have placed a company’s viability in serious question. Management may be quick to scream about low profitability levels compared to high labor and benefit costs in CBA negotiations, but at some point that concern does become a real one and the union should not be so aggressive as to bargain its members out of jobs. But on discipline and termination questions, Lawyer Burt has seen multiple cases in which unions have failed to protect workers’ interests for whatever reason, including but not limited to several “You give me this guy and I’ll give you that other guy” deals, which leave an oily, unpleasant taste in the mouths of the lawyers involved (or at least this one) and which fall within the ambit of what I am calling “union corruption.” Finally, while we’re looking at unions historically behaving in fashions that are not describable as lily-white and noble, there is a very good reason that the civil rights laws were extended to apply to union membership as well as to employment.
Conservative Burt can be convinced that his positions are not well-founded and should be modified, with a showing of evidence of some sort or perhaps with a different sort of argument. But scoffing and sneering at Conservative Burt isn’t a rhetorical trick well-calculated to accomplish the goal of persuasion.Report
Hostess provides one of many recent examples in which high labor costs have placed a company’s viability in serious question.
You have got to be kidding.
WRT Hostess: Their management handed themselves huge raises, while not meeting previous obligations after the unions had already taken heavy pay cuts in the previous bankruptcy the company had just gotten out of in 2009.
This was not on the shoulders of the unions. The management were fishing assholes who were deliberately trying to wring money out of the company, not caring about the workers and not sharing the burden, and all too happy to shut the company down and take what they could from selling off the IP.Report
I’m not kidding, M.A., although I think I’m about out of steam on this subject after this comment.
I see nothing wrong with Hostess’ old management “deliberately trying to wring money out of the company.” Generating value for their shareholders is their job.
Executive compensation is a sexy whipping boy, but it can be and often is blown out of perspective. If a company is $100,000,000 in the red, and an executive gets a $1,000,000 raise, that raise is about 1% of the problem and should get about 1% of the attention. I don’t think the numbers were that high for Hostess as to either sustained revenue shortfalls or the executive compensation, but I’m being illustrative rather than specific. Without suggesting that pay raises were appropriate in this instance, it’s not inappropriate for executives of large companies to command and be paid substantial compensation. Shareholders should insist that they bring substantial value along with that compensation and I concede, unprompted, that this is not always true. But it’s also not enough to say that the lack of profitability alone means high compensation or increases in compensation were by definition unearned; I need more information than that before I’m willing to make such pronouncements (or their opposites).
In this specific case, I for one never doubted that Hostess would get bought out of bankruptcy by a third party rather than dissolve. Its intellectual property and goodwill are valuable to escheat to the bankruptcy estate. But AFAIK, the would-be buyers requested and are insisting on the court restructuring the CBA, which is the telling part to me. That lends weight in my mind to the notion that labor was compensated at a level that materially impacted profitability.
I don’t know why you insist on refusing to acknowledge that non-executive compensation is often a large expenditure that must be addressed by a distressed company. You can point to any of a number of other stars in the constellation traced around a distressed company, but the aggregate cost of labor is still one of them, and so is that star’s twin which is the indelible fact that any union’s raison d’etre is increasing that aggregate compensation. There is more than enough room in what I am articulating for the union to serve as the advocate for labor and as a result to be an agent for the net benefit of both labor and management in a wide variety of situations.Report
I see nothing wrong with Hostess’ old management “deliberately trying to wring money out of the company.” Generating value for their shareholders is their job.
Burt, this wasn’t being perceived as generating shareholder value. The raises were at or near a time when the company was going into bankrputcy for the second time and at a time when management was talking to the unions about shared sacrifice. I think by “wringing”, he means management running out the back door with suitcases of cash while the rest of the place burns down.
The only way I think the executive compensation issue is being overblown is if it is being used to blame management for the company’s demise. As I explained elsewhere, Hostess was not a viable business in today’s market. That was the crux of the problem.
Without suggesting that pay raises were appropriate in this instance, it’s not inappropriate for executives of large companies to command and be paid substantial compensation.
It’s not, and it is very appropriate in cases where corporate turnarounds or bankruptcy is involved. How do you steer a ship out of those waters without having capable managers at the helm?
In this specific case, I for one never doubted that Hostess would get bought out of bankruptcy by a third party rather than dissolve.
As I read the pertinent facts, I came to the same conclusion.
I don’t know why you insist on refusing to acknowledge that non-executive compensation is often a large expenditure that must be addressed by a distressed company.
I’m not sure if they are refusing to acknowledge this. Their disagreement with you was based on their belief that you were blaming organized labor for the demise of the company. Maybe I am being charitable since it seems every time someone with a more conservative stance on an issue makes a comment about organized labor, the “management is at fault” hounds are unleashed by our more left-leaning brethren.
In any event, I didn’t read what you wrote that way. I happen to agree with most of what you said above with the caveat that I don’t think Hostess’ management acted in good faith when it increased its compensation. It was a PR fiasco for them.Report
Hostess provides one of many recent examples in which high labor costs have placed a company’s viability in serious question.
Well, no. Hostess provides an example of a company that’s failing due to debt and mismanagement, where management, which had just awarded itself wholly unjustifiable raises which amount to looting what assets remain, wanted to delay its inevitable and imminent collapse in order to continue their looting by asking for yet more givebacks, and labor, realizing there was nothing in it for them, said “no”. You can’t “place” something somewhere it’s already been for years.Report
Hostess provides one of many recent examples in which high labor costs have placed a company’s viability in serious question.
That statement does not offend me. Per the liquidation filing, Hostess was struggling to find the outside equity capital necessary for a recapitalization so it could emerge from a bankruptcy and the only interested equity sources (which may have been only one) indicated interest on the condition that the collective bargaining agreements be re-negotiated. Yes, the collective bargaining agreements stood in the way of a potential recapitalization of the company. Without a negotiation taking place, the company would not survive as a going concern.
The other supporting argument about the collective bargaining agreements is of the two major unions, the Teamsters was in the process of renegotiating its contract. They thought there was something in it for them so they tried to play ball. The union represented the bakers said no, and absent that cooperation, there was no outside interest in investing in Hostess as a going concern. As such, the company is being liquidated.
Notice that none of what I just said places direct blame on the unions. Since we are talking about blame, I would say that at the very least, the bakers union deserves some small measure of blame. That said, I understand the tactic they took. For them, they may feel as if they will be negotiating in better faith with a new owner under new management than under current management. That’s understandable.
The reason why Hostess makes for a lousy case study for assigning blame along political lines is because the company was a poorly run business. Yes, it had a high cost structure, but the company couldn’t grow. It came out of bankruptcy with more debt than when it went in and the only way that the company was going to get out from underneath a heavily leveraged capital structure was by growing. There wasn’t a viable business plan in place to achieve that; in fact, the opposite took place.
Business 101 – if you can’t make a profit, you can’t survive.Report
I hope (given the profession to which I supposedly aspire) I’m a little more than an “armchair” historian, and I see the Gilded Age in part similarly to the way you describe, but also in part as an era of unprecedented opportunities for workers and, especially, consumers (who usually are workers). And while I’ll agree that NLRA (and Taft-Hartly, in a roundabout way) helped unions, I think it’s important to note that they came with certain perverse (or maybe even intended) consequences for unions (for good and for ill).
As for the Conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, and Frustrated “Pierre’s,” I’m with you most of the way, albeit with some quibbles that I don’t wish to get into.Report
No shit, huh!?Report
I am fine with them organizing. I am not fine with either side using threats, violence or government coercion to support their efforts.
For the record, I do not believe unionization absent coercion will significantly affect wages. Monopolies only really work with coercion.
Workers may gain by coordinated negotiations, but the gains are unlikely to lead to SIGNIFICANT wage increases.Report
Roger, what would constitute coercion? Striking?
No one has advocated threats or violence. So I’m going to focus on coercion.
Also, is the threat of being fired coercion?Report
Striking is not coercion. Quitting or firing ( terminating the volunatry contract by either party) is not coercion. The normal source of coercion is the government requiring employers or employees to do or not do various actions under threat of law. Right to work and closed shop states both have various coercive distortions, though I am no expert on any of them.Report
Should employers be able to fire striking workers?Report
@Shazbot and James Hanley:
I am continuing the thread here because nesting is getting to be a bitch
@Shazbot:
Listen to the Podcast. Nozick is not representative of academic libertarianism
@James
Justice as it is used nowadays refers to the sum total of moral constraints as they apply to social and political institutions. Given that moral and political philosophy is fundamentally theoretical (at the Normative side of enquiry) a lack of theory is equivalent to a lack of evidence in empirical matters.Report
Murali,
1. Your link doesn’t work (at least for me).
2. Isn’t aesthetics theoretical?Report
1. Your link doesn’t work (at least for me).
link has been fixes
Isn’t aesthetics theoretical?
Yeah, but no one thinks that there are correct answers in aesthetics. In political philosophy, while there are people who say that there are no correct answers (or even better or worse ones) as a Libertarian, you believe libertarianism is the correct answer, or at least it is a better solution than the conservative one or the socialist one or the left-liberal one etc.
You don’t get to say that you just have your values, not if you are trying to have a conversation with someone who pretty much comes from the same society and a similar enough cultural milieu. You have to do some work to justify your values or maybe claim some kind of value neutrality or say how your proposal transcends particular values. Doing that is really really hard (which is why political philosophers are not going to be out of a job any time soon). At the very least, you have to be explicit about what your values are so that other people can look at them, comment and maybe see if they are worth adopting.Report
Sorry, its not that no one thinks that there is any objective aesthetics, but the only people who are obligated to produce a theory of aesthetics are those who claim that aesthetic judgments can be objectively right/wrong.Report
Wait, are you claiming that theories of justice can be objectively right or wrong?Report
Yes, and the degree and extent to where they go wrong can be gauged in the same way we think Newton’s theory of motion is has a fair bit right but a lot wrong. While Special Theory of relativity, General Theory and QM have got more things going right.Report
I’m flabbergasted. Persuade me.Report
Give me some time, I will put out a series of posts on this once I complete my 3rd chapter. (Which should be done by tonight, hopefully)Report
Dude, focus on the chapters first. This isn’t remotely important compared to that.Report
Yup, grad work first, or you’ll take 10 years to dissertate, Shazbot-style.Report
There’s a lot for me to respond to here.
1. I recognize that being a bleeding heart libertarian (BHL), a la Brennan and Thomasi et al., is not intended to be the same thing as being a Nozickean.
2. I have serious concerns about whether BHLism can be kept from collapsing into a kind of right-leaning neoliberalism or Nozickeanism. I am in agreement with Chris Bertram here and the argument he gives in the post (long):
“Libertarianism is a philosophy of individual freedom. Or so its adherents claim. But with their single-minded defense of the rights of property and contract, libertarians cannot come to grips with the systemic denial of freedom in private regimes of power, particularly the workplace. When they do try to address that unfreedom, as a group of academic libertarians calling themselves “Bleeding Heart Libertarians” have done in recent months, they wind up traveling down one of two paths: Either they give up their exclusive focus on the state and become something like garden-variety liberals or they reveal that they are not the defenders of freedom they claim to be.”
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/01/let-it-bleed-libertarianism-and-the-workplace/
3. I will listen to the podcast later.
4. I am not sure if Hanley wants to ascribe to BHLism or right-leaning Rawlsianism. If he did, that would be a good answer to a lot of my worries.
5. Above I said I might have a worry about Stillwater’s political principles. My only question is what principles he holds or is he avoiding holding principles by claiming to be a pragmatist: my least favorite argumentative move in all of philosophy! 🙂
6. For the purposes of Hanley’s questions about aesthetics or efficiency as principles of justice, I think that it is important to remember that contractarianism doesn’t makes more sense if the social contract that we all implicitly enter into requires us to treat people this way or that, respect their right to such and such.Report
In 6. I mean that a social contract will give us rights and duties. If you are a contractarian, your political principles will be a statement of the content ofthe contract (which will itself be rational) and nota statement about aesthetics or efficiency.Report
with their single-minded defense of the rights of property and contract,
There’s that binary thinking again. Let’s focus on one single principle and make it the single determinant of libertarianism vs. liberalism. Well, if you play the game that way, I guess it’s easy to define lots of people out of libertarianism, and conveniently it turns out the only people left in the libertarian camp are the extremists.
IMO you’re way off base here. Your continued insistence on using an absolutely rigid stance on a single issue as the definition of libertarian is extremely artificial. Methodologically, univariate definitions for big concepts is always a sketchy move. As long as you continue to take that approach, I can’t take your definitions seriously.
As to the issue of liberal principles and Stillwater, I’ve obviously not done a good job of making myself clear to him, since he apparently thinks I have criticized liberals for not having principles. My position all along has been that I think liberals must have more principals than he thinks they do. What may have appeared like a critique of liberals for not having principles was actually an attempt at refuting that idea by trying to demonstrate that it’s (IMO) ridiculous. What I appreciate in your approach–despite my persistent disdain for overly philosophical approaches in general–is that you strengthen my claim that liberalism is as principles-based as I think it necessarily must be. I could be wrong, or you could be wrong, or I could be misinterpreting you. But I’ve consistently thought that even a pragmatic approach must have some principles on which to build the standards by which we define what is a pragmatic move or not.
As to the standard of fairness, well, I have my reasons for being recalcitrant about that, which I’m not yet ready to make explicit. For the time being, I’m going to say that I stick with an aesthetic standard for policies.Report
Ugh. I wrote a crazy long reply this morning and it isn’t here.
Oh well. I appreciate your response. It is interesting. I’ll mull it over. If I can say something smarter about the necessity of principles for determining policy, or the definition of “liberal” and “libertarian” I’ll email it to have it posted.
And I’ll give it a racist title. Maybe they’ll put me on the masthead, then.Report
My position all along has been that I think liberals must have more principals than he thinks they do.
If you’ll permit me to get away with a quick answer, it’s this: no. You’ve criticized liberals for a lack of principles for a long time. But – if I may be so bold as to interpret the sentiment behind your complain (I know, but let me have it for a moment) – it’s that your confusing values with principles. Liberals do in fact act on values. Robustly! See LWA’s awesome comment above. But a value isn’t a principle, since a value – by definition!- is subjectively held by an individual, while a principle purports to hold objectively (either as a consequence of priors or self-evidently).Report
You’ve criticized liberals for a lack of principles for a long time.
That’s just flat out false, and I do wish you’d stop making that false claim. Obviously my writing style and your reading style don’t mesh. I’m not going to say you’re misreading me, because much of the time I’ve been trying to be subtle and roundabout in this debate (whenever I’ve made a dig about unprincipled liberalism, it has been a dig at your claim about liberalism, not a dig at liberalism itself, which I think is different than your claim about it), and it appears that my style has been unproductive.
But in plain English, my argument all along has been that I’m unconvinced that liberalism in general has as few fundamental principles as you claim it does (in part because I was a liberal in the past, having flatly rejected the conservationism in which I was raised). I think Shazbot, depending on we read him, supports my skepticism (at least he is skeptical of your pure pragmatism claim), and I welcome that because I think he’s right about liberalism being based on principle.
I am sorry I haven’t made myself clear enough before, but I absolutely affirm that I have not been arguing that liberalism is unprincipled, but that I have been arguing that it has more principles than you say it does. I could be wrong about that, of course, but that is the argument I have been pushing, consistently.
If you in fact don’t really have a prior principles, I can accept that. But that’s a different matter. Like me not being typical of libertarians, I see no a priori reason why you might not be different than typical liberals (but again, I recognize I could be wrong about liberalism).Report
The only political principle I robustly hold is that democratic elections and the legislative process ought to determine the narrowish outlines of policy. Value-wise, I’m a garden variety liberal on social issues, and a rightish leaning liberal on economic issues. Given my values, I’m a pragmatic about achieving them.
In other words, I have no first principles or any particular desire outcome of policy except that it works. If policy doesn’t work according to my values, but is democratically enacted, then I’m all right with that.
My general view is that political theories only approximate actual life, and all of them are incomplete. So their only signposts pointing in the direction of, but not leading to, best outcomes. If any one of them were enacted in it’s entirety and were the sole determiner of policy (crazy idea, right?) then the society I live in and want realized – which is comprised of a mix of competing values – would be worse off for it. I think the virtue and value of democratic pluralism is that it’s fluid enough to accommodate most most of the things that most of the citizens think are important.
Fairness plays a big role in how I view best outcomes, but rights, and equality under the law, and equality of opportunity, all play a part. I don’t worry too much about the capitalists, since I think they’re already paying sufficient attention to themselves.Report
If policy doesn’t work according to my values, but is democratically enacted, then I’m all right with that.
If we democratically enact mandatory sterilization as the price for accepting welfare, you’re all right with that? Or branding someone with a “W” on their left hand? I would be hard pressed to believe that. I don’t just mean that you’d continue to advocate for something better, but that I’m pretty sure you’d be really really adamant that “it’s just not all right.”
But perhaps I’m wrong.
And if I am, that’s fine.
Just please understand that I don’t draw many absolutist lines in the sand, either, and accept that there can be a libertarianism that’s as pragmatic and mush as your liberalism. If you can accept that, we’re cool.Report
If we democratically enact mandatory sterilization as the price for accepting welfare, you’re all right with that? Or branding someone with a “W” on their left hand? I would be hard pressed to believe that. I don’t just mean that you’d continue to advocate for something better, but that I’m pretty sure you’d be really really adamant that “it’s just not all right.”
Not a priori. And that’s the difference between us, I guess. In my calculus, branding someone with a “W” is bad, and must meet a substaitive burden to he justified, but not categorically impermissible. If there were an argument justifying it in a specific context I thought was sound, then I’d be on board. {{I could go into hypotheticals here, but I don’t think that’s necessary.}}Report
Please recall how many innocent men sit on death row and reconsider. Report
I welcome the chance to engage with you on this, zic, but I’m unable. I’m really confused.
What do you think I’m suggesting here? Or maybe this might be better: what are you arguing?Report
Seems to me that it is very much a liberal principal to stand up to a majority in the face of promoting civil rights.
Perhaps rights were not, in the past, a principal.
But I think they are now.
And it is very much a liberal principal to admit that our system of justice flawed, and to stand up for those caught by its flaws.
Perhaps I’m projecting too much of my own approaches on to others here, but one of the important parts of liberalism, to me, seems the constant perfecting; the willingness to try something to expand rights and human potential, and then to walk it back or refine it to improve it.
Even with a majority vote, branding with a ‘W’ doesn’t work here. And this, I think, is also the root with many liberals discomfort in the Arab Spring; majority-voted governments that limit the participation of women or certain religious groups.Report
At the risk of jumping into this without complete insight, I’ve been reading the Egyptian constitution as it’s emerging. Here it is in English, in a rather weak translation. I’m thinking through an essay on just what a botch is this new Egyptian constitution.
Our own American constitution was an imperfect document. But it was all the majority could get through at the time: the first ten amendments were dropped in at the last minute.
Democracy is ugly, there’s no getting around that fact. Tyranny of the majority is often uglier than a tyranny of the few — or one. Democracies begin as reactions to tyranny. But as you say, they do evolve in ways impossible to other forms of government. When Still observes branding someone isn’t categorically impermissible, we’re awfully hard on child predators. They live under bridges. But when the boy is 18 and the girl is 16, do we want to damn that boy to a life under the bridge? How do we solve that problem without walking back statute law on the age of consent?Report
Thanks for the link to that.Report
When Still observes branding someone isn’t categorically impermissible, we’re awfully hard on child predators.
That’s a good example. By my view, child predators don’t have the right to abuse children. But do they have a right to live in a society working toward a way for them to be something other then child predators? And we’ve failed their potential victims without working toward that right to help for predators; for they are forced under bridges instead of finding another potential, and their potential to victimize remains.
The 18 year old as a predator is stupid, and one of those liberal issues to push on. But here’s where common sense, as applied to individual cases vs. one-size-fits-all rules matter. Yes, it opens the system up to corruption. But three-strikes rules, we know, don’t work, either.Report
Stillwater is a man of exacting prose. “Categorically impermissible” says child molesters must be punished for abusing children. That’s all it means.Report