Who voted?

[Rodak]

Re: Who voted?

Who voted?

Why didn't I find this image a week ago??

[Sampson]

Re: Who voted?

A job, according to the dictionary is "A regular activity performed in exchange for payment." I agree with that definition more than the one you put forth. Slavery is not a job because it is forced labor, a job requires both the worker and the employer agree to terms on payment for labor.

Fine, just forget the term job.

Lets make this simple. The reason why everyone worries when unemployment is high is not because people have too much spare time. We're not freaking out by the fact that everyone is laying around and watching a bunch of re-runs all day.

We are concerned because people are not earning any wealth. They can't make their rent, they can't pay their bills, etc.

Quick question, if a profitable business "benefits society," then how would you assess this hypothetical business:

A) A private nuclear energy company makes 2% profit a year.
B) The same nuclear energy company realizes if it, say, starts dumping its waste instead of dealing with it in a safe, expensive way--It can increase its profits to 10% per year.

Does choice B mean because of a larger profit, it "benefits society" more, even though the company itself is taking actions that directly hurt the society around them through mismanagement of nuclear waste? We can get into the "invisible hand" correcting this later, but lets leave this hypothetical example to one year when the company makes that choice.

Oh, come on. Do you really think I'm unfamiliar with the concept of negative externalities? The negative externality challenge has been refuted by free market apologists for years. Friedman did it quite extensively 50 years ago.

I'm not an anarchist. Anarchy has obvious problems. In this example, society does benefit from a profitable energy company, because it is apparent that many people are making use of the energy the company is providing. But if the company is dumping waste and thereby damaging the property of others--those people have legitimate claims against the polluting company.

Now, often in the case of pollution, the pollution harms the property of so many and in such varying degrees, that it is much easier/more efficient for the government to simply restrict the pollution in the first place.

Anyway, I still fail to see how this example does anything to absolve government endeavor's of their inherit calculation problem.

[Mcardy]

Re: Who voted?

Right on, forget jobs. All I was addressing was that jobs are the most direct path to guaranteed "wealth" in this society, rather than say gambling or waiting for your parents to die.

So, if jobs then are a legitimate path to wealth, and the government through investment of the stimulus prevents the loss of jobs. The government has thus also stopped the loss of wealth. While this may not be profitable in terms of GDP, as we are not creating new jobs, it is to the benefit of society as a whole because you keep more people making "wealth" than would otherwise be not producing "wealth."

For instance, Lincoln has a huge issue with pot-holes after the last winter. Government stimulus money hired workers and gave us enough money to repave our major roads. Workers thus accumulated wealth during this time, and net society as a whole benefits because the fixes in the infrastructure lead to easier access, and less damage to private property (due to not having to run over pot-holes). How is this a "bad" thing because we don't know the absolute net gain in an exact $ figure?

Also, Census hiring. While a temporary position, the government needed something to get done and needed extra workers to accomplish it. Even if the benefit to the job-less person is to "generate wealth for a temporary period of time," I hardly think you can assess that this is a bad thing compared to those people having no path to generate wealth and pay their bills.

The negative externality challenge has been refuted by free market apologists for years .... Anyway, I still fail to see how this example does anything to absolve government endeavor's of their inherit calculation problem.

Refuted so well you don't see any point in giving an example? I admit, I am not extremely well notified in economic policy as some people, and since I had no idea what you were talking about since you're spouting buzzwords out the wazoo with no context, I randomly started talking to my good ol' ex-Libertarian friend while we were talking about NFL football today while I was at work, and he was equally as confused...I'm just going to post that conversation.

McArdy: What does this mean/is this even true? "The negative externality challenge has been refuted by free market apologists for years."
MB: I'm not even sure what that means. That negative externalities dont exist? or the market can solve for them?
McArdy: I proposed: (Business A vs. Business B)
McArdy: His response was: "Oh, come on. Do you really think I'm unfamiliar with the concept of negative externalities? The negative externality challenge has been refuted by free market apologists for years. Friedman did it quite extensively 50 years ago."
MB: Tell him to explain his answer without just saying things that don't make sense.

MB: I thought that even Friedman thought there was a role for government in dealing with externalities?
McArdy: He admits that, but I think he's looking for an argument why government can be as efficient as a private business, despite the points I gave him earlier.

"Now, often in the case of pollution, the pollution harms the property of so many and in such varying degrees, that it is much easier/more efficient for the government to simply restrict the pollution in the first place. Anyway, I still fail to see how this example does anything to absolve government endeavor's of their inherit calculation problem."

MB: What calculation problem is he talking about? Governments aren't meant to be businesses, what is this guy talking about?
McArdy: This is his word-for-word argument:

"Its the economic calculation problem. It is impossible to determine if a government project is benefiting society more so than it costs. With a business it is easy--if a restaurant is profitable, it is obvious that it has customers who are benefiting from its food. If it is not, then it is using resources inefficiently and harming society. It will soon go bankrupt and cease to exist. With government programs it is impossible to determine this."

MB: hahahahha, there is a terrible argument!

MB: Ask him about companies like Enron, Worldcom, every single Wall Street bank, the ratings agencies...were they being socially useful when they were profitable?
MB: and even so, he fundamentally isn't addressing any political philosophy's argument because no one argues that government services are justifiable because they are cost efficient; they argue that they are justifiable because they are necessary. I don't particularly care if it is economically beneficial to regulate the nuclear industry because it is worth it to stop nuclear waste from being spread.
McArdy: Truth. So the "inherent calculation problem" doesn't really exist since its about necessity rather than if it is profitable or not.
MB: I don't even get what it is supposed to address, like if the government pays for someone's health care after they've gone broke (medicaid) maybe it isn't efficient and maybe we spend more money than there is value produced by saving someone but are we really gonna let someone die because them living is worth $500k to society but it will cost $700k to save them?

MB: ask him this
MB: say that we could determine that the average person on medicare who is saved from dying from cancer will produce $150,000 in value for society, but it will cost $500,000 to save them. should we let them die?
MB: if the answer is no then this "inherent calculation problem" is completely irrelevent to anything
McArdy: And if the answer is, "YES, KILL GRANDMA?"
MB: Then hes totally amoral, and not worth arguing with.
McArdy: Woo Greg Jennings!
MB: he put the team on his back dawg
McArdy: Damn right.

And since I've only given you "WWII" as an example for government producing economic benefits in the public sector, here are a few more:

The TVA - More-so back in the 30s and 40s due to a ton of jobs building infrastruture and dams, but still extremely profitable today. (Also, it put power in "unprofitable" places where energy companies didn't want to go due to lack of population in those areas.)

The Internet and Telecommunications - Government spent money inventing the internet, and put satellites into orbit. Trillions of new dollars in economic activity has been a direct result of these two investments.

Public Universities - Generate boatloads of money from things like athletics, television contracts, etc. (And then turn around and buy a boat-load of PCs, Sports Equipment, hire coaches, etc.) Although founded by State government, a local example here is that Lincoln is getting a new arena 50% funded by University profits, Nebraska basketball will be played there, but it is also serving for "private" concerts, theater, etc.

Cash For Clunkers - Leveraged $4-5 billion into the economy in seven days, got consumers spending again on big-ticket items, and improved fuel efficiency on 250,000 cars well above expectations (preliminary) Congressional reports show a 69% increase in fuel efficiency.

Interstate Highway System - Allowed private business to ship goods across the entire United States. The impact of this government investment for America is severely understated today.

[Jeroak Nelave]

Re: Who voted?

Whoa Blaze! I just thought you were a good TF2 player, who thought you were actually smart too?!

j/k

I generally try to stay out of political discussion, because i get heated and then stop thinking clearly, but i think that Blaze has got definite support on his side, and you really need to step up with real examples if you want any support for your side of the argument Sampson.

[Hrafn]

Re: Who voted?

I haven't read their argument. Presumably, I'd agree more with Sampson than Mcardy. But as you may have noticed, I can't get very fired up about political discourse. As a conservative who has posted on a lot of message boards, with message boards and the general Internet being more prone to liberalism, I've had all these arguments so many times that they feel like reruns. And while I can be accused of many things, almost all of which are true, I am not prone to being repetitive in my tirades.

[Mcardy]

Re: Who voted?

Nah, I'm kind of copping out because I honestly don't know about the finer nuances of economic policy, and my friend is one of the most ballin', smartest people I have ever met, who happened to also be a Libertarian at one point.

However, if we had a more specific statements other than "The negative externality challenge has been refuted by free market apologists for years," I would debate rather than relying on my friend.

The flux capacitors of the neutron warp field has been proven multiple times in quantum theory!

-Yeah, okay. What the f*ck does that mean, and why is it relevant is what I want Sampson to explain. Throwing around words doesn't contribute to a debate when one doesn't explain their background, relevance and/or significance.

The statement itself may be accurate, but it doesn't mean anything by itself. It needs context. And if the "context" can't be established because it is "theory", or my examples being written off because "we haven't actually tried Libertarian economic policies, so we can't say one way or the other" does not validate the argument. If we have never tried "true Libertarian policies," the argument is nonsensical in the real world since you can never prove that it will work and we're then arguing a real system vs. a completely hypothetical one that has no way to become real-world legitimized. However, we can prove parts of real-life Libertarianism have failed (RE: Enron, Wall Street) even if the Libertarian will claim it wasn't "pure" enough.

To bring this back on track, we aren't arguing over the stimulus, or the government's ability to create and maintain jobs for 20 years due to one action. Those are one-time examples. What we are debating is the statement that :

"Its the economic calculation problem. It is impossible to determine if a government project is benefiting society more so than it costs. With a business it is easy--if a restaurant is profitable, it is obvious that it has customers who are benefiting from its food. If it is not, then it is using resources inefficiently and harming society. It will soon go bankrupt and cease to exist. With government programs it is impossible to determine this."

The question to Sampson is "Why does it matter if we can't tell if it is beneficial?" and "How can you believe profitable businesses smiles upon us all no matter what, when given examples like the ratings industry which directly caused investments to crash while they gave their CEOs millions of dollars."

C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.

Hmmmmm.....

[edit:]
I don't know hrafn, I'm not really arguing anything extremely liberal, or for that matter anything much far from the center at all. Unless you would also posit that government absolutely can't ever be as beneficial to society as a private corporation, you'd probably agree with a lot of the things I am saying.

Also, I never got my bro grabs. HOW WILL I KNOW YOU'VE FORGIVEN ME?!?!

[Hrafn]

Re: Who voted?

I haven't. I hate you forever and want you to die in a fire. But, you know, I already felt that way. So it's just a lateral move, savvy?

However, I will accept your apology if you promise never to use the phrase 'bro grabs' again, under pain of forced castration. That's just me burying a hatchet and doing a good deed for the English language at the same time.

[Mcardy]

Re: Who voted?

Maybe if you watched the Professor Brothers, it would change your mind.

[Sampson]

Re: Who voted?

Right on, forget jobs. All I was addressing was that jobs are the most direct path to guaranteed "wealth" in this society, rather than say gambling or waiting for your parents to die.

So, if jobs then are a legitimate path to wealth, and the government through investment of the stimulus prevents the loss of jobs. The government has thus also stopped the loss of wealth. While this may not be profitable in terms of GDP, as we are not creating new jobs, it is to the benefit of society as a whole because you keep more people making "wealth" than would otherwise be not producing "wealth."

For instance, Lincoln has a huge issue with pot-holes after the last winter. Government stimulus money hired workers and gave us enough money to repave our major roads. Workers thus accumulated wealth during this time, and net society as a whole benefits because the fixes in the infrastructure lead to easier access, and less damage to private property (due to not having to run over pot-holes). How is this a "bad" thing because we don't know the absolute net gain in an exact $ figure?

Also, Census hiring. While a temporary position, the government needed something to get done and needed extra workers to accomplish it. Even if the benefit to the job-less person is to "generate wealth for a temporary period of time," I hardly think you can assess that this is a bad thing compared to those people having no path to generate wealth and pay their bills.

We're going around in circles here, I must not be doing a good enough job explaining myself, so I will try once again:

The economy is a machine engaged in the act of providing people with the material resources they desire as best as possible. When you receive a paycheck, that is a claim on resources you are entitled to because of the work you have done adding resources to the general pool of material wealth.

All jobs are not created equal. We want people working jobs that will add to society's general pool of wealth. When someone gets a paycheck for doing an unproductive activity--like census counting--society as a whole is made worse off. Now, someone who did not contribute to the general pool of resources is claiming resources that they did not help to create. Society is made poorer.

So, we do not want people just engaging in any activity and collecting a paycheck. We want people engaging in desired activities and getting paid for them.

How do you know if an activity is desired or not? Quite simply, you don't. The only way to tell is through the profit function and the market. Which goes back to my original critique of government actions--you cannot tell if they are desired, except by those who wield the political power.

Now, I'm willing to admit that there are some actions which are not economically desired but are still necessary--for example nuclear monitoring as you said. But these things come at a price. We are a wealthy society, therefore we can afford to waste resources on monitoring, national defense, etc. We do not become a wealthier society by wasting more resources on these things.

Refuted so well you don't see any point in giving an example? I admit, I am not extremely well notified in economic policy as some people, and since I had no idea what you were talking about since you're spouting buzzwords out the wazoo with no context, I randomly started talking to my good ol' ex-Libertarian friend while we were talking about NFL football today while I was at work, and he was equally as confused...I'm just going to post that conversation.

Let's just back it up a step. What exactly are you trying to show with the negative externality problem? That markets never work? That the government has a role in society?

I don't even get what it is supposed to address, like if the government pays for someone's health care after they've gone broke (medicaid) maybe it isn't efficient and maybe we spend more money than there is value produced by saving someone but are we really gonna let someone die because them living is worth $500k to society but it will cost $700k to save them?

Call me immoral, but I do think there is a finite value to people's lives and we should consider that when we undertake decisions like this.

It goes back to the seen vs unseen and the concept of opportunity cost. People have a tendency to be simple minded and not see the larger picture. Take the example of the Chilean miners. It didn't make any sense to save them. If you took the millions of dollars spent on saving thier lives, and instead spent that money on contagious disease immunization in Haiti (for example), you could've saved millions of lives rather than a few dozen.

When you make policy decisions like this, you have to taken into consideration what you are giving up. We could spend all of our country's tax revenue on medical procedures, but then there wouldn't be any money left over for schools or roads or libraries or anything else.

The TVA - More-so back in the 30s and 40s due to a ton of jobs building infrastruture and dams, but still extremely profitable today. (Also, it put power in "unprofitable" places where energy companies didn't want to go due to lack of population in those areas.)

The Internet and Telecommunications - Government spent money inventing the internet, and put satellites into orbit. Trillions of new dollars in economic activity has been a direct result of these two investments.

Public Universities - Generate boatloads of money from things like athletics, television contracts, etc. (And then turn around and buy a boat-load of PCs, Sports Equipment, hire coaches, etc.) Although founded by State government, a local example here is that Lincoln is getting a new arena 50% funded by University profits, Nebraska basketball will be played there, but it is also serving for "private" concerts, theater, etc.

Cash For Clunkers - Leveraged $4-5 billion into the economy in seven days, got consumers spending again on big-ticket items, and improved fuel efficiency on 250,000 cars well above expectations (preliminary) Congressional reports show a 69% increase in fuel efficiency.

Interstate Highway System - Allowed private business to ship goods across the entire United States. The impact of this government investment for America is severely understated today.

The TVA--should be answered in my earlier statements.

The internet and public highways--I lump them together because they are both examples of infrastructure. I think government does has a role in building infrastructure to an extent, but there is a limit. It may be a boon to economic activity to build a highway between two major cities, but it hurts the economy when you are putting up bridges to nowhere.

Public Universities--I don't want to touch this one with a 10 foot pole. It could spawn an entire conversation in and of itself.

Cash for Clunkers--Let's scrap a bunch of usable resources and sell the recycled material to Asian nations so that our consumers can get new cars they don't need and have to go into debt for! But wait, we'll get a marginal improvement in fuel efficiency!

I got an idea for ya Blaze, how about dough for dumps. We'll pay people to set fire to their homes if they agree to build new ones on the lot. It'll pump billions into the home building industry and we'll see reductions in heating bills with modern insulation--never mind all that new mortgage debt.

Google search "The Broken Window Fallacy" and read it.

[Hrafn]

Re: Who voted?

Maybe if you watched the Professor Brothers, it would change your mind.

You tipped your hand, good sir! Now I know that the phrase bro grabs must appear in this video, and as such will never never watch it.

[Mcardy]

Re: Who voted?

Fine, accepting your ridiculous notion that census hiring is "unproductive", you still haven't answered my question:

"Why does it matter if we can't tell if it is beneficial?"

You have yet to address this at all, and you keep saying is the same thing over and over again. "When someone gets a paycheck for doing an unproductive activity--like census counting--society as a whole is made worse off."

1) How is getting a paycheck making society worse off?
2) How is something mutually beneficial to the govenrment and to persons "unproductive" when you cannot prove, as you say, it necessarily doesn't lose money.
3) GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE if you're going to make such a bold claim that "society is worse when government hires someone!" You have yet to give any real life example as to how this applies other than a word-for-word hypothetical libertarian theory, and blindly accepting that.

Call me immoral, but I do think there is a finite value to people's lives and we should consider that when we undertake decisions like this.

Boom. I'm taking my friends advice. Not worth the time when you are arguing such theoretical things and representing amorality, which is something 98% of people would disagree with. Anything you present from this point on is a theoretical pipe-dream assuming people have magical dollar figures above their heads and that's the only thing that matters.

You can ignore the other argument in this thread. I don't care for a response. However, you do need to get better at giving concrete, accessible evidence rather than simply stating things as if they are true. Even if they are true, I find your lack of context disturbing.



HRAFN, that is what the Communists want you to think. You're psychologically convincing yourself not to watch a sweet video.

[Sampson]

Re: Who voted?

Why does it matter if we can't tell if its beneficial?

(I thought you were kidding. I assumed it would be obvious. Oh well.)

Resources are LIMITED. If I buy a TV, that's one less TV for you and everyone else. If I spend 40 hours a week working at a factory building cars, thats 40 hours I can't spend working at a factory building bullets. And vice-versa.

If we squander resources on things we as a society don't desire, those are resources we can't use for other things. Its possible that what the government is spending money on is benefiting us, but its not possible to tell. This was the inherent problem with the economy of the Soviet Union--there's your real world example.

Boom. I'm taking my friends advice. Not worth the time when you are arguing such theoretical things and representing amorality, which is something 98% of people would disagree with.

You know who's in that two percent? Every attorney, actuarial mathematician, and benefit-cost analyst economist.

I'm glad you feel so confident to voice political opinions on economic policy decisions when you have absolutely no background information. I'm not saying that everything I'm spouting is 100% spot on--there are many intelligent people who fundamentally disagree--but you have no idea why or why not. Perhaps you ought to do some research.

[Kire]

Re: Who voted?

For me, the Republican Party has consistantly displayed to me that they value money and wealth over human rights. That's pretty much my dealbreaker.

[Hrafn]

Re: Who voted?

I like the Commies. Never saw them boo-hooing about whether torture was justified. Look at 'em cross-eyed and they'd strap jumper cables on your twig and berries and light you up. Don't look at 'em cross-eyed and they assume you intend to do it when their back is turned and put some juice in your caboose anyhow. My kind of scene.

[Jeroak Nelave]

Re: Who voted?

For me, the Republican Party has consistantly displayed to me that they value money and wealth over human rights. That's pretty much my dealbreaker.

Preach it Brutha! hehe