Posted on 09/18/2005 9:19:51 AM PDT by Willie Green
Angel Mills worked at GST AutoLeather in Williamsport, Md., most of her adult life. She cut, inspected, packed and shipped leather upholstery until she was laid off in June 2003 as the company scaled back local operations and shifted production to Mexico.
"It's sad. It's scary. I've been a factory worker all my life, and I didn't know what I wanted to do," said Ms. Mills, a 38-year-old Williamsport resident with a teenage son.
But by March 2004 she was taking a half-year course to become a state-licensed massage therapist. A federal program that helps workers who lose jobs owing to foreign competition paid for her training and offered extended unemployment benefits.
In July, she started working at Venetian Salon and Spa in Hagerstown, Md.
~~~SNIP~~~
Mr. Thomas said that for all trade adjustment program workers passing through the consortium, the average wage was $14.36 an hour before the layoffs, while after retraining it was $11.87 an hour, a decline that is common for factory workers who have to restart their lives.
U.S. Labor Department figures indicate that among the retrained, those that find new jobs end up making only 70 percent to 80 percent of their old wages on average.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Brain damaged idjits are paying $120 for Nike shoes here.
Yes, of course. I even knew people belonging to nomenklatura. Their income was about few times higher than average wage. This was not very "large inequality".
You are aware perhaps of the socialist dictators in Africa who would amass huge Swiss bank accounts while their people lived in poverty.
You are mixing apples and oranges. These dictators were thieves no less than the the free market dictators from Africa. And possibly less.
Now, in order not to get confused. The "free-market economies" DO NOT EXIST, DID NOT EXIST, AND WILL NOT EXIST.
Free market is a ideological concept which if implemented leads not to more "free market" but to instability which leads to the less freedom.
Karl Marx created his system by studying the ideology of free market. The domination of free market ideology is the most helpful condition for the advancement of socialism.
The success of free Western societies in second half of XX century was caused by the redistribution system preserving market economy and creating large prosperous middle class. This was the outcome of competition with Soviet system and with Fascism. This competition was won by the people like FDR and Adenauer.
Now the competition is gone and the political/economic elites want to restore mythical free market from Dickensian England. As it is said in the book of Proverbs: "As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly."
As someone said - if there are people so rich that they can buy government some of them will do it. The large stratification leads to the oligarchical system and economic expropriation.
And Yassar Arafat was a 'Nobel Peace Prize' winner...Is that good enough for you also???
I read your Freidman piece and it's clear that Freidman is a 'globalist' as are many other economists...Here is part of his blather...
A fourth argument, one that was made by Alexander Hamilton and continues to be repeated down to the present, is that free trade would be fine if all other countries practiced free trade but that, so long as they do not, the United States cannot afford to.
Ole Alex had it figured out...But then Alex was trying to build the country, not destroy it...
And then Freidman says this:
This argument has no validity whatsoever, either in principle or in practice.
So according to Freidman, Hamilton was dummer than a pet rock...
Other countries that impose restrictions on international trade do hurt us. But they also hurt themselves. Aside from the three cases just considered, if we impose restrictions in turn, we simply add to the harm to ourselves and also harm them as well. Competition in masochism and sadism is hardly a prescription for sensible international economic policy! Far from leading to a reduction in restrictions by other countries, this kind of retaliatory action simply leads to further restrictions.
Sure, it's ok if other countries use tarriffs but it's not good for the U.S...
Right Milty...I'll just blindly follow your advice and we'll ALL be eating rice and fish eyes 3 times a day...
Thanks! -- I meant Wes Pruden.
Kudlow is one of NRO's editors and Pruden is the Washtimes guy.
Pruden knows better too, though.
You listen too much to Hush Bimbo, would you say that if the temperature in you home is better to be 70F rather than 45F it means that 100F and more is even better? Or that if 100F plus is not good the termostats/heating system is bad?
The minimum wage should be set above the subsistence level - the difference being large enough to allow workers to better their lives and society to prosper. Workers should have their fair share in the profits in addition the subsistence.
But the minimum wage should not be so high as to undermine the economy.
The labor laws like minimum wages, 40 hours work week and prohibition of child labor are not socialism! These are the measures which created more just society and made socialism less attractive.
93 by PositiveCogins To: v. crow "Does the net reduction in the cost of cheaper goods really offset the net reduction in income?"
113 by WOSG To: PositiveCogins "YES! It's not just surplus money from the cheaper goods, its the opportunity for deploying capital and labor more effectively."
123 by raybbr To: WOSG; PositiveCogins "people lose their jobs so that buying power is lost... ... Perhaps it's a wash but I don't see a gain."
127 by expat_panama to raybbr "I was convinced of the big net gain by seeing the lists of jobs that were created... Please tell us what you'd be willing to accept as proof."
167 by raybbr to expat_panama "That's not the issue. The claim I was responding to was that there would be more money..."
We started with a hypothetical example to show how cutting import taxes presents a net economic gain to the economy.
You said "I don't see a gain." The way I see a gain is that I leave the hypothetical and look at how similar situations pan out in real life. That's where I see actual increased accumulated wealth on a mass scale. I'm still interested in whether or not there is anything you would ever be willing to accept as proof that a gain exists, or whether you've just simply decided that trade is bad that your objection is absolute.
I agree. I never had much use for that line of Rush's on the minimum wage either. In our daily lives we're forced to draw the line every day and the fact that the minimum is arbitrary is not a good reason why the minimum wage is bad. IMHO what makes the minimum wage bad is that it involves government control of the economy. Lots of economic control is socialism and very little control is free capitalism. Naturally, there must be some control with say, child labor laws.
Why child labor laws and not minimum wage laws? Well, we have to draw the line somewhere don't we?
Just think about that for a second. What good will a professional accountant do to you in a world where most of your basic goods will be homemade? If you "deindustrialize", you become dependent on other industrialized nations. If we all deindustrialize, then we go back to the middle ages.
You miss the point completely. You buy the myth that Government dictat creates wealth. It doesnt.
You buy the myth that if Govt wasnt there, all hell would break loose. Wrong.
Setting a 'minimum wage' doesnt give anybody a job.
It doesnt give anybody a job increase.
It merely says that in certain cases, people who would otherwise be willing to work for a wage X are doing something illegal.
Creating conditions for prosperity requires creating opportunities for jobs, not taking them away.
Minimum wage laws have done little to help people,
as real wages are set by supply and demand.
Good heavens, it's really breathtaking to see this level of ignorance on the subject of economics. ...especially on FR!
"As someone said - if there are people so rich that they can buy government some of them will do it. The large stratification leads to the oligarchical system and economic expropriation."
Brilliant, and you just happen to support giving the Government the power to be corrupted and phony economic theories to get thusly corrupted ... you fail to see that mercantilism, socialism, fascism and communism are all cut from the same collectivist cloth, designed to lull people into being for 'the good of the country' when in fact those few holding the levers of power benefit.
The best way to prevent the sins of oligarchy as practised in Latin America is to support *limited Government* and *free enterprise*, niether of which have been popular in Latin America, unfortunately.
In the US in the 1880s-1890s the anti-tariffs people were the populists, the farmers, the working classes ... the pro-tariff people were the wealthy industrialists.
The wealthy industrialists won the election of 1888, got President Harrison in, and insituted tariffs, the McKinley tariff of 1890 ... Prices went up, consumers got hurt, inflation and in the end a depression ensued. At least back then ordinary people knew which end was up, they kicked the bums out.
How we got to the point where advocating higher taxes and prices for consumers is 'for the little guy' escapes me, but the fact remains that throughout history, tariffs have been a ploy by manufacturing interests to garner higher profits by shutting down competition. It's been anti-ordinary-people to do so.
The real question ( and insinuation of ignorance) is not whether I have read Milton Friedman (or Frederick Hayek), but have the trade and business officials of other nations seeking to benefit from free trade through the ruse of cheap labor, read them.
It's unfortunate that A Pole's socialist education growing up has not rubbed off ... let's clear a few myths:
"You are mixing apples and oranges. These dictators were thieves no less than the the free market dictators from Africa. And possibly less."
First, there is no such THING as a 'free market' dictator. That is an inherent contradiction.
Second, you need to understand how dictators amassed wealth. Take Marcos regime for example. They would create Government monopolies and hand over those monopolies to favored friends and family. Such 'monopolies' CANNOT EXIST IN A FREE MARKET ECONOMY, since they REQUIRE GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION to outlaw competition.
Tariffs are another form of such competitive restraint, and poor countries like India stayed mired in poverty by enacting such laws that stopped their own manufacturers from facing competition.
"Now, in order not to get confused. The "free-market economies" DO NOT EXIST, DID NOT EXIST, AND WILL NOT EXIST."
This is a-historical nonsense.
I would give you the United States from 1865-1913 as an
example of a country that was very much a free market economy, and was very economically successful as a result. Taiwan recently and Hong Kong from 1949-1997 were also close examples, and New Zealand and Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s are good examples of economies that signficantly 'opened up' and as a result had prosperity.
USA from 1865 to 1929 enjoyed huge increase in economy in the period, 7% increase in GDP per year on average.
"Free market is a ideological concept which if implemented leads not to more "free market" but to instability which leads to the less freedom."
Your belief that is simply the opposite of the record of history. Schmupeter had it more right, in that free market economics creates huge wealth and that huge wealth creates a politics that would want to divert that towards other ends.
Thus, America's wealth, derived from free enterprise, leads us to value environmental protections and restrict economic activity.
On the opposite side of the scale, we see that bad economic conditions create a downward spiral into bad politics. The German depression of the 1920s led to Hitler, the collapse of the Russian economy in World War I led to Bolshevism.
Most bad conditions, like the Great Depression which resulted from high taxes and high tariffs and poor monetary policy, are from Government intervening wrongly or too much.
Thus, socialism begets poor economic performance which begets even worse Government. Thus the huge gap between Zimbabwe and USA today.
The 'free market' does not create instability in society, that is a myth of socialist economics. Instability is a result of poor economic conditions and those poor economic conditions are a result of Government *NOT* following free market policies.
To give another example of how free market-oriented policies benefit: The economics of Ronald Reagan didnt create instability in the US, but created instability in the USSR! US economic successes, derived from lower tax rates, led to USSR desperation to respond, ie Glasnost, etc., which create a political dynamic for the collapse of the Communist empire.
George Gilder made an interesting point: Which had higher average increases in Government spending from 1949 to 1997? No Government more so than low-tax free-enterprise Hong Kong. Socialist Kenya and other socialist hellholes have economies smaller than they were in the 1960s, but free market-oriented 'Asian dragons' have huge increases in the economy, which supports higher Government spending.
The ironic conclusion is that if you want to have more Government spending long-term, support free market economics.
"Karl Marx created his system by studying the ideology of free market."
Karl Marx was wrong, and you need to throw him on the ash-heap of history where he belongs.
He was wrong on iron law of wages, wrong on historical determinism, wrong to call 'free market' an ideology,
it is nothing more than the REALITY of economics as first undrestood by Adam Smith.
Schumpeter in the 1940s pointed out the many ways Marx was wrong as a historian and economist.
Marx's belief in fundamental 'contradictions' in
capitalism have been disproven by history many times over.
To even cite him on FR is laughable. This isn't DU.
" The domination of free market ideology is the most helpful condition for the advancement of socialism."
No it's not... The OPPOSITE is true. The mindset you have is very CONDUSIVE to Socialism, since you repeat so many myths the socialists propound. They've already won the argument with you ... it's just about the terms of your surrender to their ideology.
I advocate freedom.
Socialism is a prescription for poverty incompatible with freedom and prosperity. Any form of Government intervention in the economy is a restriction on other free interactions. You need to be careful in restricting economic behavior that you are not eliminating mutually beneficial interactions,
and thereby harming overall prosperity.
"The success of free Western societies in second half of XX century was caused by the redistribution system preserving market economy and creating large prosperous middle class."
The redistribution schemes have been nothing but an anchor on an otherwise successful economic model. Our prosperity we can owe to an international trade system that works (Bretton Woods, GATT, and all the stuff the protectionists hate), a tax system that is reasonable (thank you Reagan), and overall technology advanaces that create productivity boosts... things like our welfare system have only held us back, and as we see in Europe, it is now such a drain, their whole economies have fallen into Socialism-induced stagnation.
" This was the outcome of competition with Soviet system and with Fascism. This competition was won by the people like FDR and Adenauer."
Kudos to Adenauer, who was FAR MORE FREE MARKET THAN ANY LEADER IN EUROPE TODAY ... but FDR lenthened the depression with bad policies. As noted, the depression made people Democrats by making them more dependent on Government.
Reagan and Gingrich made people less dependent on Government, increasing freedom and social stability.
You want to sell us watered-down Socialism because you think, wrongly, the political system will go full tilt Socialism without a small innoculation.
Wrong. The real cure is to educate people on the realities of the economy and make them responsible for their own actions to the largest extent possible. The real cure is to have an enginer of economic dynamism so good that all have an opportunity to participate.
Well, I did read this prominent quote from your link:
"We could say to the rest of the world: We cannot force you to be free. But we believe in freedom and we intend to practice it......" Milton Friedman
"A. Pole": I read Milton Freedman - I find him a moron and an intellectual fraud.
In light of Friedman's quote above, I would have to share the same opinion as " A. Pole" at #134.
From Book 1, Chapter 9 of The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith:
"In reality high profits tend much more to raise the price of work than high wages. If in the lininen manufacture, for example, the wages of the different working people...be advanced two pence a day; it would be necessary to heighten the price of a pice of linen only by a number of two pences equal to the number of people that had been employed about it...that part of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into wages would...rise only in arithmetical proportion to this rise of wages. But if the profits...should be raised five per cent that part of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into profit would...rise in geometrical proportion to this rise of profit.
"Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the prices, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods...They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."
Seems that Friedman would prefer to address the "perfect world"--in which case, of course, his theory would be correct.
By ignoring the reality--that is, that certain Governments manipulate the system for their own advantage--Friedman simply demolishes his own argument.
I suspect that a large part of the perceived "no-gain" has to do with the anomalic and deceptive "wealth effect" of inflating prices for housing--similar to the "wealth effect" of the NASDAQ "dot-bomb."
Many people percieve that they are "wealthy" because their home's value has increased.
But that's NOT a real gain; it is a chimera. Wealth is created by manufacturing profit and the subsequent capital investment.
There are a helluvalotta Dutchmen who USED to be wealthy, until the tulips crashed.
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