The problem is not that they ship the jobs out, that is the logical and sensible capitalist move. The problem is that they hoard the profits rendering the shipping out of jobs detrimental to the national economy and social mobility. The lunacy is where you actually expect the guy who says "I'll do what I want with my company and money" will somehow benefit the economy with those profits. You are a fool if you believe that, and that guy is a fool if he trickles money down just because he loves everyone. He's not suddenly going to become socialistic. If he shipped out 100 jobs, and those 100 jobs were buying 1,000 cartons of milk, he's not going to replace that consumption even if he widens his profit margin. He's still going to buy his 10 cartons of milk, and maybe with his extra money create another 10-20 jobs >> but remember even this small new job creating business would have to be at least as profitable as the business he's already running, otherwise it's not worth his time. This is precisely one of the ways to achieve income disparity in a country. While right wingers will have you believe that the 1% earned their money 400 times better than the average person, it is a pure myth. Those 100 jobs he shipped out pulled the rug from under people who were seeking social mobility. That won't come back. For this reason, it's best for governments to give the LEAST assistance to large corporations, and almost totally direct it towards creation of new businesses. That's the engine, that's the growth, that's the creativity, that's where you are not picking sides, where people are self-employed and not enslaved, that's where every person can become a business interest in a country/world where businesses are treated better than people or non-executive employees. That's the only way you'll keep up with the constant attrition of jobs from outsourcing and technological improvements. The free market lovers ignore inheritances and the FACT that we don't all start equal. Some people have more power than others, that's why you need minimum wage. Because in direct negotiations, a significantly more powerful side may forge an unfair advantage based on inherited wealth and power. That's not civilized, and it's certainly not a "free" market. Adam Smith according to Noam Chomsky: 1993 http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199303--.htm 1995 http://www.chomsky.info/books/warfare02.htm 2010 http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20100528.htm People, it's a big joke. One of the biggest propaganda wars ever. The notion that free market capitalism can be tainted with socialistic practices is a myth. The notion that free market capitalism is good for an entire country is an even bigger myth. It was what people used to convince poor people to play along and fight for a rare chance, ensuring that the rare non-inheritance success is glorified and advertised to make sure people keep playing along. Here's the myth that Adam Smith genuinely believed, but they are still selling to you despite historic evidence firmly opposing it. Put some good policies in place, forget these silly labels. The free market capitalists will have you believe that the only problem with free market capitalism is the injection of socialistic practices - a claim that has never been proven, and IMO will never be. Completely farcical, given they believe in socializing their losses (particularly the non-monetary losses) and handing down their hoarded profits so that generation after generation can build on them. The policies in place to keep a stranglehold over your politics, your economy, and truly the world's resources... it's time to say bye to those things. They are causing massive problems in and out of every country. The fact that they have been allowed to indoctrinate school kids with it has been bad enough. Now that we're all systemically and politically linked, the reprucussions are becoming bigger and bigger. Stakes are higher. Nooses are tighter. You guys have fared particularly poorly:
I just re-wrote that entire post thinking I erased it by mistake. Looks like I had just pressed enter lol. Thanks for the compliment Brandyon!
Which is embarrassing for you, because then you're put in the difficult position of explaining why the monopsonist exploiting market power is in any rational definition moral.
How do you attract the most productive employees if you don't offer them more than your competitors? Sure, and the employer can, of his own free will, choose not to bargain collectively and find other employees. If the employees are the only people that can perform the job, they might have leverage to bargain collectively. It's a simple moral principle, do whatever you want (short of theft/violence/fraud), and don't presume to stop others from doing the same. You can apply it to most any scenario.
Not immoral to take advantage of circumstances, especially in business transactions. Even accepting your premise that it is immoral, I don't hold to your puritanical view of using force to ban immoral activity.
First, you didn't say it was not immoral, you said it was moral argument. Why is allowing a monoposonistic party to exploit market power morally superior to not doing so (or, if you want to be a wuss about it, less immoral). Allowing monopolists/monopsonists to reach economically inefficent outcomes doesn't seem remotely moral at all - it just seems ****ing stupid. What source of morality are you using? From your posting you appear to be very steeped in judeo-christian concepts of morality, particularly the gospel. I don't know if you've ever read any of these "gospel" thingies, but they tend to be fairly redistributive when it comes to concerted exploitation of unequal market power of the strong over the weak, which is apparently on the list of "don'ts" from what I've been told...
Really? First half of his post was saying the govt shouldn't pick side and dole out money to promote small businesses. In the 2nd half, he takes issue with free market capitalism, the things he would like to see more of as indicated in the 1st half. Which one is it? Don't kill the goose when all you want is the egg. Reaching a wrong conclusion is worse than being ignorant, see Lenin, Mao.
This is hardly a consensus position. I haven't visited this topic for a while, but here Walter Block talks about it in the link just provided. Gary Becker did too, but I can't find his original work on it. If you can get your hands on a copy of Block's Employing the Unemployable that would be nice. For obvious ethical and economic reasons, the minimum wage should be abolished. ::EDIT:: Simple Google search I should have done in the first place helped me out. I had forgotten about Neumark and Wascher on the CK "study". I don't have a link to it but it was in the American Economic Review in 2000. Also found this, though I haven't even read it. Just trying to point out that the CK stuff is not gospel.
My own reasoning. It's wrong to use force to mandate/prohibit private activity. You're making a puritanical argument, you believe the private actions of others are immoral and want to use force to prohibit them. I'm more of a pluralist, different sets of values should be allowed to coexist when possible. For example, if two parties both want to enter into a $1/hr business agreement, you would use force to put a stop to that (minimum wage), even though it doesn't involve you. So the parties move to China where that sort of voluntary transaction is not outlawed.
Then why don't you say it's not reasonable? Morality in the normative sense means that your "own reasoning" is irrelevant. Laying the groundwork for a boring logical fallacy wherein every bit of regulatory activity is immoral! Lazy, boring, tired, not worth addressing. No, I'm making a practical economic argument about monopsonistic behavior and market power being exploited to lead to ineffeicint outcomes. You're making the puritanical, "moral" one about the evils of regulation. It couldn't be more clear. if one party was using monopoly/sony power to extract an inefficient outcome, yes it does involve me because such outcomes make all of society worse off. Econ 101, probably about the 4th week or so, dead weight loss, all that. I guess you werent' there. This concept of unbreakable little private spheres that don't effect anybody else really doesn't exist - that's the whole point of markets in the first place. It appears to be a construct of your "morality" "reason" mash-up. Maybe you shoudl discard it and pick up a book.
To build further on my previous post, China is not the only labor market where jobs are being exported. Existing jobs are not usually exported to China or other labor markets; instead, new jobs are exported between these labor markets. The way the Romans practiced exchange arbitrage between barter and coin-money civilizations is similar to the way Americans practice labor arbitrage between emerging markets. This arbitrage is now conveniently called globalization; entire businesses are built around finding the cheapest and most cost effective labor. Globalization is the trade of goods and services. While some countries have abundant cheap oil, others have abundant cheap labor. China just happens to be the world's largest cheap, cost effecient labor market.
Politics aside, which is for election, the real goal behind all these talk is the service market access in china which is what the US does best. This is really what's going on here. Stay tuned for some horse trading between China and US in near future.
I hope your not saying this is what Obama has done or is planning to do. If so you obviously have nothing to do with small business currently and you also think that GM isn't a large corporation.
McDonalds, Burger King? In Tech you don't need a lot of employees to run a huge website. 1 trader can do better than a 100. You need manufacturing jobs because tech jobs just don't need a lot of people.
He added some stuff, including the graph (questionsable figures) after I made the post. Still a great post imo, but probably got a bit emotional at the end haha. It's only human. Morality has nothing to do with it. The issue is the fact that an imperfect competition market form would arise, namely monopsony which has been mentioned multiple times. The "force" you're referring to is a regulation to help stabilize a market, rather than allow the over/under reaction of PEOPLE dictated market stability. The popular idea over the last 20 years has been the efficient-market hypothesis and rational market expectations. This basically says the wealth of information available in a financial market naturally moves prices on publicly traded assets to a general equilibrium. Any mutations would be quickly found as irrational, and the equilibrium will quickly be found again. THIS IS INSANE! An equilibrium requires a stable environment to exist. Our market is not functioning in a vacuum. The market is dictated by people. Irrational, emotional, reactionary people. We are terrible at quantifying risk. This is a cornerstone of behavioral economics, which I am a big proponent of. We saw examples of in 1987, 2000, and 2007 that deregulation does nothing to allow a more stable market to form, but only invites volatility. Mutations are not forced out as they would be in a truly stable state, because the long term risk is not properly assessed when faced with an opportunity for massive short-term gains. Your rationality seems to be that this type of volatility can be stabilized with further deregulation, all in the name noth being told what to do. Well... I'll assume you've either exploited these circustances personally, or were sold by someone who has. Minimum wage isn't even a primary issue, but the implication that the government should not introduce regulation bold considering the current state of the economy, and how we arrived here. Then again, I'm only human and I make some stupid biased assumptions just like the market "experts" I criticize.
It's not just losing the jobs, it's the fact that the quality of the products go in the toilet. It doesn't matter much you save on your home appliance if it breaks after six months. It's not a bargain if it's junk.
