What about Ricardo's Law of Wages Stabilizing at Subsistence Level? Or should we follow Milton Friedman's pick and chose methodology?
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 ...
A market economy is the method by which resources are allocated, by the individual decisions of buyers and sellers.
Capitalism is better as a description of ownership of resources. The definition you quote is good, but can be misleading ( one could confuse resource allocation with resource ownership ).
In other words, one could see a centrally planned capitalist economic model. Unfortunately, examples to date include Japan ( and by extension, Germany and Italy of the 1930's )
Additionally, people tend to mistake the US as a pure market-capitalist system. It is not. The US has a mixed economic system.
"Unlike"? Communism and Freemarketeerism have much in common, starting with materialism.
You are insane.
Really? Those auto workers in Mexico aren't paid for their work?
I thought absolute state control of the economy and the total absence of state control were identical. Thanks for confirming that for me. LOL!!
Perhaps his wonderful communist upbringing included too few vitamins during brain formation?
I hope you can at least acknowledge that they have many differences, starting with the most relevant difference of all: Freedom. Hell, free markets actually incorporate the word "free" within its title. You even use it as well.
Communists also like to talk about freedom. They just made distinction between "negative freedom" and "positive freedom". I had to learn it in school (in Communist Poland) and I must admit that their distinction looks much smarter than free market slogans. You freemarketeers make Communism look good!
Negative freedom is when you are allowed to do something, positive is when you are able to do something.
So you have the negative freedom to fly, but only the positive freedom to walk. So in free market the worker has negative freedom to stop working, but only independently wealthy has positive freedom to do so. Marxists claim that the positive freedom is much more important.
I ate quite well, thank you.
No I was refering to the chinese and their copyright infringments, piracy and stealing trade secrets which they have become masters.
Only to the brain damaged. :^)
So, we agree that the Chinese stealing trade secrets is bad and the Chinese buying Maytag is no threat. Glad you cleared that up.
Their claim is one thing, but their actions are another. No marxists is going to let an independently wealthy person quit work. Instead, they will kill 'em and take their wealth. So if all you want are these so-called claims towards this marxist thing called "positive freedom", enjoy yourself.
My mother ate well too at that time. My main problem with my head is that it is too big for the most of hats :), really.
I would disagree with that. There are two components in a market--buyers and sellers. In a true free market, the decisions of each determine where resources are allocated, where prices are established, etc.
I would argue that the true parasitical elements come into play with such things such as price floors ( read: subsidies ) and price caps ( such as the recent arguments on 'price gouging' in the wake of Katrina ).
In the US, for instance, certain agricultural products have an artificially established price floor--think 'government cheese'. While there may be well-meaning sentiments behind a price floor, they tend to interfere with the market, and resources that might have been allocated to more efficient endeavors are now re-directed because of pay-offs from a government entity. It might gain a politician votes, but it does ripple through the market, the effects can be debated.
And for those befuddled Catholics who think somehow that anti-free-markets are the will of God (however they screwed up JPII's thoughts on this, I'll never know, but he was anti-materialist, not anti-free-markets. Sheesh. The man was pro-liberty. And you cannot be at the same time for individual liberty AND for government control of the product of an individual's labor, which is what anti-free-market policies are), I urge them to mosy on over to the Acton Institute, where they'll get bitch-slapped by a right-thinking priest.
What about Ricardo's Law of Wages Stabilizing at Subsistence Level? Or should we follow Milton Friedman's pick and chose methodology?
Interesting. From your link:
In a compelling three-part series of articles first published in India, Huck Gutman, a visiting Fullbright professor at Calcutta University, paints a troubling picture of a global economy that increasingly relies on a desperate workforce, which, compelled by circumstance and vulnerable to exploitation, is forced to toil for subsistence wages.
Now, are these desperate workers living under a system of too much (gasp) freedom or too much government control?
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