Trade war with China?Follow

They said the same thing about the internal combustion engine and its impact on manual farming. What you are missing is that as we reduce the number of people required to perform existing tasks, we free up that labor to do new things, generating greater total productive output and wealth for all. The pursuit of "protecting jobs" is IMO the wrong way to approach this.



I'm not sure what this fragment was supposed to say, but are the poor worse off today than they were say a century ago? I don't think so. In fact, I'd argue that they are vastly better off, most of which has nothing at all to do with government programs.



You're either lying, or you haven't had a raise or promotion or upward job move in 20 years. It's not about how much each dollar buys you, but how much an hour of your labor does. And every stat I've seen shows that an hour of labor doing the same job today as 20 years ago buys you the same relative amount of dollars (compared to staple goods), and those dollars go farther when buying non staple goods (like computers, ipods, cellphones, TVs, etc). The areas where costs have gone up have been housing (which was a bubble and is correcting), and health care (which is its own animal). Someone with 20 years more experience should be earning more relatively speaking than he was 20 years ago. If you aren't, you're doing it wrong.



What country do you live in? If it's the US, then your experience is counter to what nearly ever other citizen experiences (Aside from temporary issues, the vast majority of people are better off after 20 years in the labor market than they were starting out). If not, then have you considered that the reason why your labor doesn't seem to be helping you as much so that you need those communist/socialist programs is *because* of the cost of those very programs? Kinda self fulfilling, isn't it?




Yes. Because all your labor does is make other people rich. I'm thinking there's a bit of "woe is me" exaggeration going on here. I call BS.

But where do we put those people? Into other jobs, where do the people from those jobs go? Jobs don't magically appear when jobs are lost. You don't need to pay robots they don't need to eat/sleep/sh*t. You can cut the bottom line by getting robots, but where do these people go that are no longer required, and how do they survive. They are still required to pay their way through life, its not all rainbows and sunshine when jobs are lost, you don't get a vacation when you are unemployed, have a mortgage, have family to feed, and support.

You can tout how awesome the assembly line, and the robotic welder and the UAV are, but in the end someone loses a job, an its not a fantasy land like it was made out to be, it is sh*tsville.




That fragment was supposed to be part of the previous section I just happened to hit period and not coma. Poor is poor, its not from a health stand point its from a psychological stand point, and an ethical stand point. Most poor people are more likely to commit a crime to get a step ahead in life. Don't know if you have been lucky enough to avoid it or not, I am assuming you have in your nice cushy office and likely white collar job. You tell the auto workers all around Michigan that its their fault hey don't have work, tell them to quit being lazy good for nothings when the job they have worked on since they were young is gone to a robot or down sizing because the company had a bad day on wall street. Most people do not like being poor, or not well off, most people do not like asking for help from others, most people would prefer to be able to handle their lives themselves. But when you lose a job and it is the only thing you have ever done, who do you turn to then.




You sir are and idiot I am sorry but this is stupid as hell. I do earn more, quite a lot more. But guess what, I also spend more, on basic needs like electricity/water/nat gas/food. The only thing that hasn't changed is the cost to pay for my house which is a locked in fix rate. Everything else has gotten more expensive. How can you sit there and say a dollar has the same buying power as it did 10/20 years ago hell a dollar can't even get me 1 litre of gas anymore. A dollar isn't enough to buy a bottle of water. You are very very naive if you think the value of each dollar you have isn't worth less. Unless you don't pay your own bills, buy your own food, pay for your own gas, pay for your own extracurricular you are the most ignorant person I have ever had the misfortune of meeting.




You realize it would cost me more to have health insurance in the states than I pay a year in taxes? You are pretty naive, but thats ok most americans are when it comes to social programs, they seem to think that they have some extraordinary cost that is insane. How much do you think it costs for you to have health insurance, I would wager more than 1500 a year, wouldn't you.



I work to pay bills, I work to buy food, I work to have fun. When I am at work the company profits of what I do in a day, when I pay bills the owner/operator of the service profits from me paying for that service, when I buy food the farmers and stores in which I buy from profit on the sale, when I go have fun said establishment profits on me being their. Everything I do with the money I make is profits to someone else, while at work I am earning profits for those people.

That all trickles up hill to a very few amount of individuals by comparison to the amount putting in in the end. So yes my labor does make others rich, and considering 2/3 non work related things I listed are needed to survive, and working makes profits (otherwise the job would be redundant).

Edited, Oct 12th 2010 7:57pm by rdmcandie

I'll respond to other bits of insanity later, but this jumped out at me:



I did not say a dollar was worth the same. In fact, I went out of my way to say that comparing dollars to dollars is meaningless. Compare an hours worth of labor to what you get. Bypass the dollars and go to the things you trade your labor for. That's how you actually measure standard of living growth.


I'm not sure why I'm bothering to discuss this with you if you can't grasp things like adjusted versus real evaluations.

Edited, Oct 12th 2010 5:29pm by gbaji

Median Household Income (non-inflation adjusted obviously)
2009: $49,777
1989: $28,906
72% higher income

Consumer Price Index
2009: 215.8
1989: 124.6
73% higher cost of products


So, if you're working the exact same position at the exact same level as you were 20yrs ago you're correct that your dollar doesn't get you as far, but only by a very small amount. Gbaji's point is you shouldn't be at the exact same level you were 20yrs ago, thus people 20 years younger than you today should be worse off than you were 20 years ago, but you should probably be a bit better off today than 20yr younger you unless you really suck at what you do, have no idea how to manage your money, or are in a position of negligible social mobility (likely because of the other two). Also, @#%^ this goddamn gnat that somehow found it's way into my apartment and keeps flying in front of my screen just long enough for me to be distracted but not long enough be able to find it and kill it.

EDIT (found what I was looking for):
Average Wage $/hour
2009: 18.69
1989: 9.83

93% higher dollar/hour

So Gbaji's right form that angle as well.


and for the hell of it:
Mean Income (non-inflation adjusted obviously)
2009: $67,976
1989: $36,520

110% increase, this is higher than the median increase because the rich are getting richer at a disproportionate rate compared to the poor, but both groups aren't bad off.

Edited, Oct 12th 2010 9:21pm by shintasama

Correct. Also that's a pretty tiny variation *and* taking a measurement in the midst of one of the worst economic down turns of the lasts century. That's clearly an exception and we can expect the trend to be a bit better (meaning most of the time someone entering the job market will be better off than someone entering the job market 20 years earlier). Obviously, there are going to be year to year variations.



Thank you! That's exactly what I meant. I think we can all agree that while such a thing is possible, it's going to be the exception rather than the rule, and it speaks far more to the person than the economic system he lives in. Most people manage to improve their total economic condition over the period of their lives. If you've managed to fail to increase your salary ahead of cost of living increases for 20 years straight, you're doing something wrong.




Yeah. I had one flying around my office for awhile. Drove me nuts (not that that was a long trip mind you).

and because agreeing with Gbaji this many times in a row gives me a bad taste in the back of my mouth:
To say that workers were better off during the industrial revolution than previously despite horrific working conditions is probably true (obviously if it wasn't an improvement over their alternatives, they wouldn't have done it- my ex-roommate from college uses the same logic to justify sweat shops, indentured servitude, and slavery), but it doesn't follow that that everyone wouldn't have been better off with an industrial revolution without the horrific working conditions. There are a lot of other contributing factors to overall social and economic well being (for example-> improved technology).

Edited, Oct 12th 2010 9:18pm by shintasama

Sure. But when everyone is doing this equally, it results in a fair method of determining relative value, doesn't it? That's really the strength of capitalism. In any other system, some authority steps in and decides how much your labor is worth relative to someone else's, or to a loaf of bread. And those decisions are usually made on the basis of social and political pressures rather than economic reality.



I have never said this. I have stated repeatedly that the objective of corporations (anyone in business for that matter) is to maximize their profits. But at the same time, the objective of the worker is to maximize his salary for the least amount of effort. And the objective of the consumer is to buy the best quality good at the lowest price. They are all part of the same whole and their effects and actions work when they are each and all allowed to pursue those objectives fairly.

Strange that you don't make backhanded comments about how naive it is to assume that consumers will take the stores they shop at into their arms and willingly offer to pay more for the same goods, or that workers fail to help out their employers by willingly working longer hours for less pay. Funny, isn't it? Aren't they all doing the same thing? I'm treating all the players in the game fairly and by the same rules. You are not. I don't make special exceptions for anyone. I do, however, believe that when the rules are fair for everyone, the game will be better. Don't you agree?




I mean "blindly" as in "you don't bother examining your own position". It's not about me accepting what you say. It's about me looking at what you are saying and seeing in it huge contradictions and double standards. Exactly like condemning an action when it's taken by one market entity while supporting and perhaps even praising it when it's taken by another. You're clearly not assessing the act of maximizing gains objectively, but are using some other criteria.

I don't view corporations any more or less positively than I do workers, or consumers. But you do. That's your problem, and that's why you can't honestly and objectively examine this issue. You've become so convinced of the need to pick a "side", that you can't see that it's not about sides at all. Everyone loses when you break the market rules which you agree with in 2 out of 3 cases, but are willing to "blindly" throw away because you've been taught to hate the third case.




Then what is it? You made a sarcastic comment about how glorious and prosperous times were for workers during the industrial revolution. So unless you have a bizarre definition of "prosperous" which doesn't have anything to do with relative wages, that's at least half of your argument demolished, right?

What does "glorious" mean to you in this context? I suppose that could be some subjective assessment of the working condition. Maybe it's based on a comparison of working in the fresh air of the farm compared to the drab surroundings of the factory district. As I argued earlier, that's purely subjective, and I also suspect that you're idealizing the reality of farm work. It was back breaking and not at all the idyllic vision that some people seem to hold. And the air wasn't that fresh either.



Yes. And the article takes the best case estimates from those skeptics (best case *for* their arguments that is) and shows that even factoring in their issues, workers were progressively better off as the industrial revolution progressed than they were before *and* that these improvements began long before government social programs designed to help them were introduced.

You're just having a hard time accepting that a political assumption you've held your whole life is really just the result of a century and a half of lies. I get it.

Edited, Oct 12th 2010 7:32pm by gbaji

I guess, if that were true, you'd be right. Not everyone does that, even minimally, much less equally.

When I was in China I used to read the China daily every day. My favourite headline was:

CHINA WILL CONSIDER EVERY OPTION IN TALKS WITH TAIWAN.
As long as those talks are held under the One-China principle.

I think it's mostly, "But, that guy is rich! I wanna be rich, too!! "

Edited, Oct 13th 2010 12:50pm by Belkira

No. As in "It works better at determining relative value than any other system we could use". If you don't agree, then by all means, present a better alternative. You can't though, can you?



No. Rational and based on facts and reality. Unlike your position which is based primarily on making broad assertions and hoping no one actually checks your math.



As you'll find out in November, there are plenty of people to make up for your lack of care.

Interesting wasn't until my Masters. Challenging kicked two months before the final 3rd year exams.

The first year is basically a gap year for people who could afford a degree but not a gap year.