The economic Illiteracy of the MOWS crowds.

[Baruch Menachem]

The specifics of the incoherent are kind of vague, but while the specifics of the demand are not clear, the general idea is.

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

High Tariffs only encourage monopoly. There is no way monopoly is good for the average citizen. High Tariffs mean high prices for shoddy goods.

Tariffs on the particular states that have bad human rights and environmental records on a case by case basis might be a rational point of discussion. But just high tariffs on everything is a bad idea.

I have no idea how they determine "living wage" standards. I would like to know what their criteria are.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Economists don't have economic illiteracy they just LIE.

Economic Wargames

How much have American consumers lost on the depreciation of automobiles every year since 1980? Who knows? Who cares? Not the economists. Manufacture more junk. Three cheers for GDP!

So most people have no wealth because they worked their live away for junk and economists did not explain what was going on. The OWS crowd isn't talking about mandatory accounting and planned obsolescence. But the problem is older than what they talk about.

psik

 

[kwc57]

The specifics of the incoherent are kind of vague, but while the specifics of the demand are not clear, the general idea is.

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

High Tariffs only encourage monopoly. There is no way monopoly is good for the average citizen. High Tariffs mean high prices for shoddy goods.

Tariffs on the particular states that have bad human rights and environmental records on a case by case basis might be a rational point of discussion. But just high tariffs on everything is a bad idea.

I have no idea how they determine "living wage" standards. I would like to know what their criteria are.

The same way Obama determines what a "fair share" is. Honestly, these OWS folks have absolutely no idea how life, the world or business really works. They are just like children who think because mom and dad still have checks in the checkbook, they still have money. My step-nephew is one of the OWS types. He is 28 years old, only holds a job for a couple of weeks at a time, mooches of of my brother and his mother to live rent free and eat their food and currently is traveling the country playing folk music in coffee houses for pocket change. He wants to feed the starving children of the world. His mom tells him that he doesn't even know how to feed himself. His greatest ambition is to sit in cafes and coffee houses until 3 in the morning and sleep until 1 or 2 in the afternoon. But he thinks all of those rich people are greedy and stole the money from the people and should fork it over to people like him so he can make the world a better place. I kid you not, I'm serious as a heart attack.

 

[caela]

Why do these people think a "living wage" needs to be 20$ an hour? I don't make that much but I manage to live, relatively, comfortably supporting myself and my daughter. Things get tight sometimes but the bills get paid, we have a roof over our heads, and food on the dinner table. When a couple more of the debts (school loans and the car mostly) are entirely paid off, in a couple years, I'll be able to take the "relative" out of the sentence and just say we live comfortably.

You don't need an exorbitant wage to live comfortably. You need to live within your means and realize that if you aren't rich, a Rolls Royce is probably not going to fit into the budget.

 

[Dragon]

Why do these people think a "living wage" needs to be 20$ an hour?

They don't.

Well, one of them does. He posted that on the forum. Most don't, though.

 

[midcan5]

This belongs in Economy Section.

'Living wage' is a tautology and like so many words / concepts only understood in the mind of the user. Is there such a thing as a non-living wage? It would seem that if we live in a civilized and fair society anyone could procure a wage that allow them to live nicely. Now look at wage statistics since Reagan, and tell us all about it. Or don't.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/183410-the-road-to-prosperity.html
http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/138954-five-zombie-economic-ideas-that-refuse-to-die.html
http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/179218-who-speaks-for-the-children.html
http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/152702-financial-crisis-was-avoidable-inquiry-finds.html


"['Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act'— now widely referred to as welfare repeal]...fails to acknowledge the role that scientific poverty expertise played in bringing welfare as we knew it to an end. Following a well-established pattern in post–Great Society policy analysis, the Clinton administration’s poverty experts had already embraced and defined the parameters of a sweeping welfare reform featuring proposals that promised to change the behavior of poor people while paying little more than rhetorical attention to the problems of low-wage work, rising income inequality, or structural economic change, and none at all to the steadily mounting political disenfranchisement of the postindustrial working class. Approaching the poverty problem within the narrow conceptual frame of individual failings rather than structural inequality, of cultural and skill “deficits” rather than the unequal distribution of power and wealth, the social scientific architects of President Clinton’s original, comparatively less punitive welfare reform proposal made “dependency” their principal target and then stood by helpless as congressional conservatives took their logic to its radical extreme. Their helplessness in the matter was not just a matter of “bad” politics laying “good” scientific knowledge to waste. It was also a failure of the knowledge itself." Introduction, Alice O'Connor: 'Poverty Knowledge' [ame]http://www.amazon.com/Poverty-Knowledge-Science-Twentieth-Century-Politics/dp/0691102554/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8[/ame]

 

[California Girl]

This belongs in Economy Section.

'Living wage' is a tautology and like so many words / concepts only understood in the mind of the user. Is there such a thing as a non-living wage? It would seem that if we live in a civilized and fair society anyone could procure a wage that allow them to live nicely. Now look at wage statistics since Reagan, and tell us all about it. Or don't.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/183410-the-road-to-prosperity.html
http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/138954-five-zombie-economic-ideas-that-refuse-to-die.html
http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/179218-who-speaks-for-the-children.html
http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/152702-financial-crisis-was-avoidable-inquiry-finds.html


"['Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act'— now widely referred to as welfare repeal]...fails to acknowledge the role that scientific poverty expertise played in bringing welfare as we knew it to an end. Following a well-established pattern in post–Great Society policy analysis, the Clinton administration’s poverty experts had already embraced and defined the parameters of a sweeping welfare reform featuring proposals that promised to change the behavior of poor people while paying little more than rhetorical attention to the problems of low-wage work, rising income inequality, or structural economic change, and none at all to the steadily mounting political disenfranchisement of the postindustrial working class. Approaching the poverty problem within the narrow conceptual frame of individual failings rather than structural inequality, of cultural and skill “deficits” rather than the unequal distribution of power and wealth, the social scientific architects of President Clinton’s original, comparatively less punitive welfare reform proposal made “dependency” their principal target and then stood by helpless as congressional conservatives took their logic to its radical extreme. Their helplessness in the matter was not just a matter of “bad” politics laying “good” scientific knowledge to waste. It was also a failure of the knowledge itself." Introduction, Alice O'Connor: 'Poverty Knowledge' Amazon.com: Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) (9780691102559): Alice O'Connor: Books

Do the fucking math on a minimum $20 an hour wage.

Idiot.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

I agree "living wage" is a tautology, but I have heard the phrase used repeatedly by those who want to increase the minimum wage for over 30 years. I still want to know how it is defined. Other than "More than I'g getting now"