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To: A. Pole
The Ricardo's law applies to the ideal free market model.

So, these workers don't exist? That's a relief. Then what's your point? Do you have a point?

344 posted on 09/20/2005 9:54:21 PM PDT by Toddsterpatriot (If you agree with Marx, the AFL-CIO and E.P.I. please stop calling yourself a conservative!!)
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To: Toddsterpatriot
Do you have a point?

Right now I am going to sleep. Keep fighting.

345 posted on 09/20/2005 9:58:06 PM PDT by A. Pole (Gov.Gumpas:"But that would be putting the clock back, have you no idea of progress, of development?")
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To: Toddsterpatriot; Willie Green; Wolfie; ex-snook; Jhoffa_; FITZ; arete; FreedomPoster; Red Jones; ...
The Ricardo's law [of Wages Stabilizing at Subsistence Level] applies to the ideal free market model.

So, these workers don't exist? That's a relief. Then what's your point? Do you have a point?

Unwittingly you have asked about the key point. Why the wages are significantly higher in Western countries?

Ideal models are the mental tools, at best good approximations. The actual reality almost always deviates from them, even in physics.

These deviations often point to something else and it is fruitful to investigate them.

Marx (among other things) had in common with freemarketeers the strong and blind belief in Smith/Ricardo theories. So he logically concluded that workers will be reduced to the subsistence, that capital will become monopolized/concentrated, that global trade will fuse the world economy into one and that capitalism will reach dead end.

Freemarketeers differ from Marx that they do not look into the logical consequences of their theory. They see free market in isolation, ahistorically like a some pagan timeless myth.

But we know that things did not go the way Marx predicted or freemarketeers wanted. Why?

Well, the other "irrelevant" factors "distorted" the ideal. One is plain human solidarity, whether national or inspired by Christian care or by political prudence/necessity or personal generosity of the wealthy.

Another is organized struggle of labor (trade unions) and progressive organizations which managed to wrest the important concession like 40 hours work week, prohibition of child labor, retirement funds, abolishment of slavery, progressive taxation etc, etc ...

Good example of the "utopian" reformist attitude is Charles Dickens. In his Christmas Carol he laid down the solution transcending narrow minded inhumane "realism" of market worshipers. It is not surprising that his works earned hostility and contempt from many Marxists.

History has proven Dickens right. Human beings cannot be forced to fit into made up theoretical schemes. Poetry can be a better tool of understanding than tedious scribblings of winners of the Noble Prize in Economics.

354 posted on 09/21/2005 7:53:12 AM PDT by A. Pole (Gov.Gumpas:"But that would be putting the clock back, have you no idea of progress, of development?")
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