Chew on this for the afternoon

Here's something I haven't heard suggested, and wording it correctly will be a challenge:

Change the bill-writing process to include an "author" for each and every part of each document. I'm tired of hearing about stuff "slipped into" a bill in the middle of the night by some staffer who turns out to have been working for some industry group or other third party. So let's have the history of every word of every clause be a matter of public record.

File this under the general heading of "Accountability."

Sign Kyoto perhaps?

That's a platform I can get behind. PZ for president!

I think Just John really has something here. Software engineer's have settled this one so implementing is would be easy. If you want to change the text of a bill you can check out the text and make your changes. When you check it back in the changes are logged. 'Tis simple. It's almost as if they don't want more accountability in the legislative process.

And i think they should add:
-Public financing of campaigns (most of the details have already been worked out.)
-instant runoff elections

Repeal the oil-depletion tax.

End the free-range farming that's destroying the desert southwest.

Ban watering of desert golf courses.

Is the way of the future?

Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI

Exactly what are the benefits of the minimum wage, apart from raising unemployment?

kyle -- You get my point exactly, including its roots in software change logging.

Exactly what are the benefits of the minimum wage, apart from raising unemployment?

My quick read of the DOL website shows not strong correlation between minimum wage laws and unemployment rates. What makes you say that this is true? And i mean evidence not theory.

Exactly what are the benefits of the minimum wage, apart from raising unemployment?

The minimum wage is a tool to ensure that people can earn enough when working that they can live of the wage. A frightening amount of Americans need two jobs to make ends meet - and I don't mean two jobs per family, but two jobs per person. If they could manage with just one job, the other job could go to someone else, and while the higher wages would put presure on the employers, the added buying power created by the extra pay and jobs would lead to a stronger economy.

As Kyle pointed out, there is no real correlation between minimum wages and unemployment.

Ooh, I just love how you've declared any and all opposition to these points to be indicative of "right-wing troll" status.

And the cherry on the cake is that the vast majority of these points have no policy attached to them, so we can't evaluate whatever methods you support using to make those goals a reality. Presumably the end justifies the means...

You really ARE trying to provoke comments by being intentionally obtuse.

1. Bankruptcy - Leave it alone for 2 years and see if it has any effect upon consumer borrowing behavior.

2. Minimum Wage - Yes, but more focus should be on earned income tax credits.

3. Universal Health Care - Of course. The money is already there. We spend twice as much for the same level of health outcomes as the EU.

4. Progressive tax code - The objective is to prevent the unnatural concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

5. Reduce Corporate giveaways - How about increase corporate takebacks, like broadcast spectrums on the public airways.

6. Marijuana - Legislation needed tp change current rules allows federal funding of only research on bad effects of Marijuana. Need funding for evaluating good and bad.

7. FICA wages - Raise cap BIG TIME.

8. Sex education - 'Abstinence only' must still be PART of the program, but only a PART. Need to stress the Psycho-Affectional component of assuming an adult sex role leading to monogamy and mutual devotion.

9. BAD stuff is BAD - We can't say it too many times.

Kyle:

My quick read of the DOL website shows not strong correlation between minimum wage laws and unemployment rates. What makes you say that this is true? And i mean evidence not theory.

Well, the theory, greatly simplified, goes that the more you have to pay each individual worker, the fewer individual workers you will be able to pay, but I've never seen any concrete evidence that would support that contention.

"Generally move towards "more decriminalization" of drugs, though the details complicated there too."

I think this is an understatement. It is well known that most of the drug laws in the U.S. came about from racism, xenophobia, and outright liars (e.g. Henry Anslinger). I don't think these are good reasons to prohibit drugs, or anything really. One common reason that prohibitionists give in order to justify the "War on Drugs" is that drugs (or more precisely, the particular drugs that we have chosen) are harmful to us, so we must prohibit them as a matter of public safety (or something along those lines).

If we are prohibiting drug use because of the possible negative health effects that come with drug use, then we are doing an awful hypocritical job of it. Alcohol kills WAY more than all of the currently illegal drugs do combined (~100,000 vs. 25,000). Tobacco is the deadliest drug, killing four times as many people per year as alcohol, and yet both drugs are legal. Obesity is killing people in droves every year, yet food that is terribly unhealthy and which contains little to no nutritional value is sold legally to millions of Americans daily. The government is either terribly incompetent at looking out for public health and safety, or, more plausibly, drug prohibition does not perservere due to health concerns.

I can't think of any justifiable reasons to prohibit the use of drugs? Can anyone give me a good reason for continuing the prohibition of drugs in the United States? I only ask that you avoid baseless speculation and stick with evidence/reason based arguments. Thank you.

Why universal health care? Is it ill?

Bob

Increase CAFE standards.

Never liked that one much. Just forces automakers to build cars that people don't want to buy. If you want to reduce fuel consumption, grow some 'nads and raise the taxes on fuel.

"Kill faith-based funding. Certainly kill federal funding of anything that engages in religious discrimination."

I would LOVE a candidate who stood up and said "I don't give a shit about your fairy tales. I'm going to drag you primitive screwballs kicking and screaming into the future."

Caledonian:

Ooh, I just love how you've declared any and all opposition to these points to be indicative of "right-wing troll" status.

No, he didn't.

"any trolls care to oppose?" != "anyone who opposes is a troll"

Learn to read, retard.

And the cherry on the cake is that the vast majority of these points have no policy attached to them, so we can't evaluate whatever methods you support using to make those goals a reality. Presumably the end justifies the means...

I'm sure we all have plenty of ideas about how these proposals could be implemented, but I'll bet that most of us realized immediately that specifics of policy aren't the point of PZ's post. Except for you, of course.

Besides, you wouldn't be able to evaluate policy specifics even if PZ did list them, so what the hell are you complaining about?

You really ARE trying to provoke comments by being intentionally obtuse.

And yet you still can't come up with anything of value to contribute to the conversation.

"Well, the theory, greatly simplified, goes that the more you have to pay each individual worker, the fewer individual workers you will be able to pay, but I've never seen any concrete evidence that would support that contention."

Right, but isn't a part of general employment theories that if you pay those workers more, they will be more able to participate in the overall economy, making the economy more robust and thereby increasing your profits and allowing you to hire more workers at that higher pay? I'm too lazy to look it up, but I think Henry Ford had something like that idea, declaring that he paid his workers enough that they could afford to buy the car they were making.

"A free society that allows each individual to seek his or her own selfish ends (without deliberately trying to harm anyone else) will produce a state in which everyone's interest is optimized without any individual knowing in advance what that state might be." Stuart Kauffman

Here's a question: why have a progressive income tax system?

Norman said:

7. FICA wages - Raise cap BIG TIME.

Why "BIG TIME"? Do you have something against the small business owners who will likely bear most of this burden?

No, he didn't.

"any trolls care to oppose?" != "anyone who opposes is a troll"

Logically and literally, yes. Colloqially, no -- the implication is clear as day. Myers makes a distinction between 'us' and 'them', presents a list of positions that he claims defines 'us', and then asks a loaded question about opposition.

Your sophistry isn't fooling anyone.

***

We could list pages and pages of desiderata, but just stating that we think some things would be really swell is pointless. Listing sets of changes that we want to be made in order to achieve particular, feasible goals in a forseeable manner isn't.

4. Progressive tax code - The objective is to prevent the unnatural concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

The word you're looking for, Mr. Costa, is 'undesirable', not 'unnatural'. Capitalism inevitably leads to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

Right, but isn't a part of general employment theories that if you pay those workers more, they will be more able to participate in the overall economy, making the economy more robust and thereby increasing your profits and allowing you to hire more workers at that higher pay?

In a closed, stable economic system, that's probably true, but of course, that's not what we have. There are far too many randomly fluctuating variables to establish a simple cause and effect like this one, or like the one of mine to which you responded. And even if there is a signal from which we could draw such a conclusion, it's probably too lost in the noise of the market for us to make any real sense of it.

I'm too lazy to look it up, but I think Henry Ford had something like that idea, declaring that he paid his workers enough that they could afford to buy the car they were making.

Hell of a guy, Henry Ford.

Here's a question: why have a progressive income tax system?

Because, everything else being equal, you can better afford to pay more tax on the last earned dollar than on the first earned dollar. Also, it should probably be mentioned that the general tax structure of the US is pretty much flat, rather than progressive.

Back to Just John's comment,

Here in Michigan, it is part of our constitution that any amendments added to bills have to directly relate to the originally proposed legislation.

While I freely admit that riders on legislation at the federal level has benefited both parties at various times, the mere act of doing so weakens the public trust in government. Let's stop it.

-Flex

'Abstinence only' must still be PART of the program,
A program can't be partly "Abstinence Only". That's what "only" means. Of course, abstinence education can be part of a comprehensive program, and as far as I know always is. I don't think anyone ever advocated a "contraception only program". Certainly the phrase gets no Google hits.

By the way, the UK only introduced a national minimum wage in 1997, back when Blair could remember he was part of the Labour Party. Industry pundits claimed then that the unemployment rate would skyrocket as a result. It didn't.

I'm too lazy to look it up, but I think Henry Ford had something like that idea, declaring that he paid his workers enough that they could afford to buy the car they were making.

Ford had monopolistic control of a rapidly expanding growth industry in an economic environment where mass production and large-scale competition hadn't yet dominated.

He also exerted a great deal of paternalistic control over his employee's lives, using their dependency on the wages he paid them to shape his small societies as he saw fit. Additionally, he was virulently anti-Semitic, although that has nothing to do with his economic theories.

Exactly what are the benefits of the minimum wage, apart from raising unemployment?
-------------

Spoken like a man that has minimum wage employees.

Index the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) to inflation.

Pass a law that says anyone speaking in front of any of the seals of the United States government (e.g. the Presidential Seal) is automatically considered to be speaking under oath. (Courtesy of Randi Rhodes)

I just decloaked after months of lurking, so pardon me while I spit out a few OT observations as well. 1. PZ is a god, or would be, if gods existed. 2. See observation #1. 3. "Equal Rights For Squid" would be a good name for a rock band.

"I don't think anyone ever advocated a "contraception only program". Certainly the phrase gets no Google hits."

Now it does

Spoken like a man that has minimum wage employees.

I have no employees. Poland has a minimum wage and 17% unemployment. Many people who don't work officially work on the "black market" earning less than the minimum wage, without any insurance, without paying taxes, without any security. If they could be emplyed legally, they'd at least have some security network. But they won't be employed legally, because their work is not worth the minimum wage.

If nothing else, this thread is helping me fill up my killfile.

More substantively, this

Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation

is frustratingly vague. "Some other environment-related regulation"? Global warming is a massive problem we have not yet addressed in ANY serious way; doing so will be among liberals' knottiest challenges when we finally do take control of government. We need more comprehensive ideas than just "CAFE standards." They're out there, fortunately, and were I not in the middle of a very important game of fake poker I might even be able to name one or two.

I have no employees. Poland has a minimum wage and 17% unemployment. Many people who don't work officially work on the "black market" earning less than the minimum wage, without any insurance, without paying taxes, without any security. If they could be emplyed legally, they'd at least have some security network. But they won't be employed legally, because their work is not worth the minimum wage.

Here the problem isn't minimum wage. It's lack of qualifications, and lack of enforsement of laws (if they couldn't be hired on a balck market, they would be hired for the minimumwage, as there isn't any other choice).

Marriage rights for all, which includes "gay marriage" and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens.

My twist on this would be the abandonment of marriage as a civil institution and its replacement with legally defined "domestic partnerships." These could be extended not only to same-sex couples, but to individuals with other living situations such as a single adult taking care of an elderly parent, two single-parent siblings or friends living together to cut expenses, or other circumstances that could benefit from legal recognition.

Then let the churches keep their "sacred institution" as freakin' sacred as they want. Let them refuse to perform marriage ceremonies for whomever they like--hang those intolerant agendas out for all to see. Don't want to marry a mixed-race couple? a same-sex couple? a couple where the woman (heavens!) is the primary breadwinner and (horrors!) has no plans for children? Fine--just don't expect society at large to play by your insular, xenophobic rules.

Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen had a column on a similar topic today... worth reading.

"Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards "more decriminalization" of drugs, though the details complicated there too."

The Democrats complicity in "the war on drugs" is exactly the thing that led me to consider myself a libertarian for a number of years.

But then I started hanging out on the internet and discovered Libertarians were insane.

What the hell is a civil libertarian to do these days? (other than gritting their teeth and helping the dems for the time being, of course)

Let me be the first to advocate for a contraceptive only program. I'm fairly sure that lack of sex makes people crazy and turns them into theists. Or, in the great words of the (late) Chef:

Stan: Chef, what's the right age to have sex?
Chef: 17, children.
Kyle: You mean, if you have found the right person?
Chef: No, just 17.

What exactly constitutes "abstinence education" anyway?

I can't for the life of me figure out what you would fill a class period with in such a program.

Here the problem isn't minimum wage. It's lack of qualifications, and lack of enforsement of laws (if they couldn't be hired on a balck market, they would be hired for the minimumwage, as there isn't any other choice).

Or: the company would not hire anyone and shifted the burden on already employed people.

Or: the company would go bankrupt.

Really, it's not that simple. Poland is a different economy than the USA and maybe here the minimum wage is a bigger danger than in America. But I don't think there are great benefits to it, anyway.

Poland has a minimum wage and 17% unemployment.

This one never gets old, "The plural of anecdote is not data."

If you look at the BOL website you can find that Both Hawaii and Alaska have minimum wages above the federal minimum. and they have unemployment of %7 and %2.3 percent respectively.

Never liked that one much. Just forces automakers to build cars that people don't want to buy. If you want to reduce fuel consumption, grow some 'nads and raise the taxes on fuel.

Eh, I'd rather the onus be on automakers to provide cars that use fuel more efficiently than use a tax which can seriously hurt the working poor and cause more economic hardship than it solves environmental problems.

Never liked that one much. Just forces automakers to build cars that people don't want to buy.

The unbelievable popularity of Scions and Priuses (Prii?) kinda makes me think this may not be the case... many dealers have already sold out their Scion allocations for the year and the Prius is an undeniably hot commodity.

I wouldn't personally shed too many tears for the bigger-is-better crew if all of a sudden they couldn't buy 8mpg behummoths any more... the pickup lane at my son's elementary school is a shrine to conspicuous consumption. Why should the greed of a wealthy few be allowed to compromise the future of everyone else?

Just to make my previous post more clear. I still see no correlation between minimum wage and unemployment. Since i have no life i spent my lunch break finding a little graph in support of this point.

I know there are theories on both sides. That's why without data you can just argue back and forth forever (like a sunday mornign talk show, or thanksgiving with my folks). So, i asked for data. The data from the DOL about unemployment in different states really do not support a correlation (unless you are so desperate that you are impressed with an R^2 of 0.03). So if you are going to argue that minimum wages increase unemployment i want actual data, not anecdotes.

p.s. i don't know why such an eminent physicist would have made such a graph so don't ask.

"A free society that allows each individual to seek his or her own selfish ends (without deliberately trying to harm anyone else) will produce a state in which everyone's interest is optimized without any individual knowing in advance what that state might be." Stuart Kauffman

"Everyone's interest" shoudl be replaced with "each persons's interest" as the one thing such a thing does not guarantee is that the interests of the whole are in any way addressed. And the interests of the whole might include an interest in the future (by which I mean sometime beyond the next fiscal year).

This approach is essentially an appeal to the powers of evolution to provide an optimal solution. Look around, however, and we discover that while evolution provides solutions it doesn't care much for ethics or morality when finding them. We need to direct our search with conscious, deliberate, and moral effort and not rely on the mean intelligence and individual greed to guide our societies.

Proposed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt January 11, 1944

Every American Is Entitled To:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his product at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

Ooooops, forgot to title to the above...

The Second Bill of Rights

Convenient summary of data on minimum wage.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=494922&CFID=…

Bit out-of-date; I haven't yet found a more recent one. Many European countries apart from Poland have high unemployment, of course, but they have other constraints on the labour markets besides the minimum wage; the difficulty of sacking staff, in particular.

"A free society that allows each individual to seek his or her own selfish ends (without deliberately trying to harm anyone else) will produce a state in which everyone's interest is optimized without any individual knowing in advance what that state might be." Stuart Kauffman

Looks good on paper I guess. The problem is, it's just an unsupported assertion, most popular among those whose interests are already closer to optimal than most.

The real Bill of Rights is enforceable. The Second one would be one big pile of good intentions. You can tell precisely whether your right of free expression is taken away, but how to tell whether your education was "good" or not?

Phil said:

Eh, I'd rather the onus be on automakers to provide cars that use fuel more efficiently than use a tax which can seriously hurt the working poor and cause more economic hardship than it solves environmental problems.

This smacks of conspiracy theorism to me - as if the automakers possessed some magic technology to make cars get better gas mileage but are suppressing it to further their evil plans.
Don't you think that if a carmaker had some way to greatly improve fuel economy with *no compromises* to cost and performance that it wouldn't be on the market as soon as possible?

Molly said:

The unbelievable popularity of Scions and Priuses (Prii?) kinda makes me think this may not be the case... many dealers have already sold out their Scion allocations for the year and the Prius is an undeniably hot commodity.

The Prius is doing a great job of meeting a market need. However I'm not sure the 934,000 people who bought Ford F-150's in 2004 would find it all that attractive.

I wouldn't personally shed too many tears for the bigger-is-better crew if all of a sudden they couldn't buy 8mpg behummoths any more... the pickup lane at my son's elementary school is a shrine to conspicuous consumption. Why should the greed of a wealthy few be allowed to compromise the future of everyone else?

Would you shed a tear for the factory workers whose jobs were displaced when their behemoth factory was shut down due to declining sales? Would you shed a tear for the retiree whose portfolio lost value because of decline in the price of their shares of the behemoth maker?

The comments on this thread have provided me with the most glorious boost I've had since getting off the happy pills, especially the references to "National Day of Slayer" (10,000 thanks, Todd!) and TMBG's "Birdhouse in Your Soul."

OK. Odd to encounter this here.

Now I feel oddly compelled to explain "Birdhouse in your Soul" a bit, since that's probably my favorite They Might Be Giants song and my wife and I puzzled over the Jason lyric quite a bit before getting it.

It's a sweet-silly/stupid-touching song that takes a bit of attention to figure out and has an oddly compelling percussion break in it that's kinda magical.

My favorite verse includes the quoted line:

There's a picture opposite me
of my primitive ancestry
which stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck-free.
Though I respect that a lot,
i'd be fired if that were my job,
after killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts.

Bluebird of friendliness
Like guardian angels it's always near...

(chorus:

Blue canary in the outlet by the lightswitch
who watches over me,
make a little birdhouse in your soul...
Not to put too fine a point on it,
say I'm the only bee in your bonnet;
make a little birdhouse in your soul.)

The song turns out to be about about a bluebird night light in a child's room, and the "picture opposite me / of my primitive ancestry" is a picture of a lighthouse hung on the opposite wall.

Oddly, some people think the song's about God; others think it's just a fantasy for children who are afraid of the dark.

Go figure.

However I'm not sure the 934,000 people who bought Ford F-150's in 2004 would find it all that attractive.

The vast majority of these vehicles are driven the vast majority of the time by one person hauling nothing, and the number of people who would suffer substantially if they were not so easy to obtain (i.e. not treated favorably as trucks instead of being expected to meet the standards of the vehicles they compete with in reality, passenger cars) is tiny.

Would you shed a tear for the factory workers whose jobs were displaced when their behemoth factory was shut down due to declining sales?

Yes, I'd think it was sad that their company was run by people who got paid a lot of money to fail to maintain profitability in the face of reasonable regulation.

Would you shed a tear for the retiree whose portfolio lost value because of decline in the price of their shares of the behemoth maker?

Yes, I'd think it was sad that they staked their future investing too narrowly and on the assumption that unfettered production of outsized vehicles would continue indefinitely, regardless of the cost to society.

Alas, K Klein, your concern for the behummoth (yes, it's a deliberate misspelling/neologism) factory workers comes too little, too late:
Ford to shut F-150 plant

Doesn't it seem more intuitive to think that there might be newer, more secure and ultimately better job opportunities in factories producing vehicles with lower fuel consumption? They've got to be built somewhere, right? And it seems to me that perhaps American automakers, with their myopic focus on fuel-slurping mega-SUVs, are shooting themselves in the foot. Once again, Japanese manufacturers are ahead of the curve with higher-efficiency, lower-cost vehicles. I'm not positive about the Prius, but I know that Scions (the xB, anyway) are built in Japan with 100% made-in-Japan parts. Plenty of good jobs there--why can't American-owned companies do the same thing?

And I'm not about to shed too many tears for the fate of portfolios heavily invested in American automakers as they are, anyway. Any dingbat with a WSJ subscription could've told you years ago to divest your GM and Ford holdings ASAP.

(And about those 934,000 people who bought F-150s last year... two of them live on my block. One owns a sushi restaurant, one's an exterminator who drives his work truck--a Toyota Tacoma--5 days a week. I don't think it would destroy their livelihoods to have to choose something a little more eco-friendly next time they go car shopping.)

Sorry about the mixup, Paul--I swear I was on that other thread when I commented... but I had to go re-sign into TypeKey, and that must've thrown a spanner in the works.

"Bluebird" is, indeed, a damn fine TMBG song. I also very much like "Snail Shell"... back when I had to do such things, I wrote an essay for my poetry class analyzing it. (I don't actually care for poetry much, but song lyrics are great.) Also, of course, "Particle Man," "Mammal" and "Why Does The Sun Shine?", in a vain attempt to bring this comment back to something science-y enough for Pharyngula...

As for the FICA thing, I'd actually reverse it. Make the cap a minimum, instead of a maximum.

You only pay into it if you make at least $35k (for example) or more.

And tie minimum wage to Congress' pay raise. :D Right now, their pay scale is going up significantly faster than the CPI.

I know it may sound like heresy to the readers of this blog to support a repeal of the estate tax but I do. Every day more and more of the "middle class" create an estate that they would like to see passed on to children and grandchildren. As incomes increase and property values increase the accumulation of "wealth" that tops out the excluded estate is easier every day. Also keep in mind that you have already paid taxes once on the money you used to buy and maintain that house, investments and small stock portfolio. People object to a repeal of the estate tax as a gift to the "rich." I think it was that genius Pogo who said, "We have met the enemy and it is us."

Phil said:

Eh, I'd rather the onus be on automakers to provide cars that use fuel more efficiently than use a tax which can seriously hurt the working poor and cause more economic hardship than it solves environmental problems.
This smacks of conspiracy theorism to me - as if the automakers possessed some magic technology to make cars get better gas mileage but are suppressing it to further their evil plans.

Preferring a solution which concentrates on the supply end rather than making working poor people pay several cents more a gallon in taxes is conspiracy theorism? Uh . . . ok. You must find it hard to get around day to day with that kind of paranoia.

Molly,

No apology necessary.

I swear I was on the other thread too. (Assuming "this" shows up in the "Chew on this for the afternoon" thread, and "the other thread" was the "America, Return to God!" thread.)

But my browser got funky around TypeKey, spinning in infinity, and I cut the text, killed the browser, restarted, and thought I'd returned to that thread and relogged-in to TypeKey before posting. Either my Firefox and my TypeKey are not quite getting along, or some other glitch and my cognitive limitations are somehow obscuring the real problem.

Molly:

Please don't mistake me for an SUV lover. I share much of your disdain for them. However, I think the approach of forcing choices on people rarely works and often has unintended consequences.

OK. I'll bite. A "yep" means that I agree with PZ, a "nope" means he's off base again.
And spare me any argument. You asked if anyone else opposes, that's all; so remember, you asked for it!!!!
* Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration YEP
* Repeal the estate tax repeal YEP
* Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI NOPE (too facile a solution)
* Universal health care (obviously the devil is in the details on this one)NO NO NO NO NO.
* Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation Don't know enough about it
* Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice. On the last one there's probably some disagreement around the edges (parental notification, for example), but otherwise. Absolutely not. Continued destruction of the innocent goes against claimed Democratic basics
* Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code Yep
* Kill faith-based funding. Certainly kill federal funding of anything that engages in religious discrimination.No to the former, yes to the latter
* Reduce corporate giveaways Provisional yes (sounds too facile again
* Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan OK
* Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions.No to the former. Provisional yes to the latter
* Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards "more decriminalization" of drugs, though the details complicated there too.Yes, with an emphasis on the codicils
* Paper ballots Absolutely
* Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. Obiously details matter. Not at the expense of making daycare institutionalized
* Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes.Nope
* Marriage rights for all, which includes "gay marriage" and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens. No to the former, not enough info on the latter

These are also good general values sorts of proposals.

* Torture is bad Yep
* Imprisoning citizens without charges is bad Yep
* Playing Calvinball with the Geneva Conventions and treaties generally is bad Yep
* Imprisoning anyone indefinitely without charges is badYep
* Stating that the president can break any law he wants any time "just because" is bad Yep, though in time of war can be problematic

Phil:

Preferring a solution which concentrates on the supply end rather than making working poor people pay several cents more a gallon in taxes is conspiracy theorism?

You tell me then, Phil. If not a conspiracy then why is there a supply problem today? (Before you accuse me of paranoia again let me say that I don't think there is a supply problem. There is a *demand* problem).

Kristjan Wager: The minimum wage is a tool to ensure that people can earn enough when working that they can live off the wage

I think they should abolish the minimum wage. Why keep the people you say you care about at the minimum forever?
Especially with it tied to CPI? How many people are at the minimum wage that has a family? Show me the numbers. I think the answer would be very few or very transient. Look at the same people a few years down the road. Poor people don't stay that way forever.

A job paying minimum wage is a start. People shouldn't be at them for very long. A person seeking a better paying job helps society. A higher minimum wage keeps people down and out. They don't have to move up because the pay is livable.

Hey Nature (i'll assume we are on a first name basis). I think your perceptions as to what the minimum wage is may be incorrect. you want numbers? Try the CEPR

Minimum-wage workers are not all teenagers looking for some fun money; a substantial share are adults making significant contributions to the total family income. In the early 2000s, less than one-in-five workers earning the minimum wage was under the age of 20 and half were between ages 25 and 54.1 In 2002, minimum-wage workers earned an average of 68.0 percent of their total family income (Chapman and Ettlinger, 2004). However, even if a worker is employed full-time, full-year at the minimum wage, he or she earns just $10,300, putting him or her below the poverty threshold of $13,020 for a one-parent, one-child family. Further, most workers employed at or near the minimum wage are not offered (or cannot afford) health insurance from their employer, leaving them with a high probability of being uninsured.

You can read their methods here:

Klein: Is it a "conspiracy" to claim that corporations produce and advertise more of the item that has a higher profit margin?

The big, gas-guzzling SUVs have a higher profit margin than compact cars.

Coincidentally*, they're also advertised far more.

If the profit margin on SUVs was reduced, the advertising dollars would be reduced and/or moved to other items, such as vehicles which, simply by nature of being smaller, use less gas.

Pretending everyone is rational is all well and good, but if it were the case, advertisement would be far less profitable than it is.

* not really.

"Oddly, some people think the song's about God; others think it's just a fantasy for children who are afraid of the dark."

Huh. I always thought it was about poor losers who have identity crises because they can't live up to their family's expectations, like a minimum wage employee who is descended from the Rockefellers. The little bluebird light is stuck staring at the portrait of his forefathers, always cognizant of the fact that he is incapable of doing the same job (killing Jason off and all), and the birdhouse is a place to feel safe and love yourself in spite of it. Maybe I read waaaaay too much into it.

About the minimum wage - one thing that is usually not taken into consideration is the effect of loss of efficiency through excess training. Minimum wage employees are incredibly unstable; according to Eric Schlosser the average McDonald's employee lasts 4 months. That means that there are always new employees in the learning curve, being all inefficient. A higher-paid, more stable work force saves on trainee productivity loss.

About the minimum wage - one thing that is usually not taken into consideration is the effect of loss of efficiency through excess training. Minimum wage employees are incredibly unstable; according to Eric Schlosser the average McDonald's employee lasts 4 months. That means that there are always new employees in the learning curve, being all inefficient. A higher-paid, more stable work force saves on trainee productivity loss.

This is, in part, a result of the law of unintended consequences.

A lot of conservatives think that it only applies to liberals...

Not wanting to waste bandwidth commenting on each of PZ's proposals, let me add one of my own, albeit related. I disagree with the use of CAFE standards, not the intent of, but their nature. To reduce the nation's dependence on and very high per capita consumption of crude oil, we should implement a steep tax on all petroleum based products--gasoline, fuel oil (including diesel), and petroleum-based products. Gasoline should carry a Federal tax of at least $2.00/gallon. We'd have to implement it slowly, since we'd bankrupt the owners of Hummers if implemented cold turkey. But the effect would be to compel Detroit to immediately get cracking on fuel efficient cars, compel the development and installation of much more efficient furnaces, compel better insulation in heated buildings and spaces, compel the use of more efficient industrial processes, and doom the sprawl driven by MacMansion and two acres for every John Doe. Taxes influence behavior and this one would remake the American landscape to benefit of all. Would it dislocate much of the economy? Sure. We'd have a lot of white elephant buildings, cars, and manufactured goods, but it would be no worse than the buggy whip makers, farriers, and grooms put out of work when the car eclipsed the horse.

Kyle, thanks for the pointer to the "Center for Economic and Policy Research". Their goal sounds dubious to me:

The goal of CEPR is ensure that the citizenry has the information and analysis that allows it to act effectively in the public interest.

"act effectively in the public interest" sounds leftist to me. The economic policy I prescribe to is more interested in individual choices.

Keanus, your plan seems impeccable. Give government more money. That'll solve yet another problem. You're brilliant.

Nature, that was my mistake. I didn't spot you're childish trolling fast enough and was drawn into commenting. Kudos to you. But fool afoolma can't get fooled again.

"act effectively in the public interest" sounds leftist to me.

Because, of course, anything that recognizes that there is any such thing as a "public interest", anything which recognizes that we live in a society, rather than as a random clump of individuals, is "leftist".

And I can't help but remark that the variety and effectiveness of those personal choices that NatureSelectedMe seems so keen on are maximized when there's a greater distribution of capital than arises in this market-worshipping libertarian slant on economics.

Isn't game theory still a part of the economics cirriculum? I'm beginning to think it isn't.

Keanus, that's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. Rather than taxing the hell out of petroleum (which would hurt manufacturing, and more importantly, the poor), we should subsidize the transition to alternative fuel sources until economies of scale kick in, and then we could stop subsidizing them, and maybe throw some tax credits on for companies willing to make the transition. That's how we've always dealt with technologies that stagnate at undesirable equilibria, and it works remarkably well. Trying to take a bastardized-market approach like the one you've suggested is probably born of that "the market giveth and the market taketh, amen" philosophy, which is ironic since it calls for us to actively screw with the demand curve by artificially jacking up the price-tag.

Nice.

CAFE is definitely the wrong way to encourage fuel economy. Since it specifies corporate average fuel economy, the end result is that companies like Ford, who make all their money on gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs, produce a few lines of vehicles that lose them money (per vehicle sold) but push up their average.

If you think about it for a minute, you could probably take a guess as to what their current money-losers are.

Essentially, Ford (and probably to some extent, GM) has become a company that builds small cars so that it can sell large trucks. Increasing CAFE would make that worse, unless we set an absolute minimum on fuel economy.

Personally, I like the idea of imposing fuel taxes and finding a way to alleviate the impact on the poor.

Graculus, have you read any of the articles on CEPR? My instincts were right. I don't think this would surprise you but I usually like reading Milton Friedman. Random clump of individuals is an interesting way to put it.

You know, Universal Healthcare could really be thought of as subsidizing manufacturing. Here's why:

American manufacturers are the only ones among the G8 who must supply health care plans for their employees. This means that foreign manufacturers are already at an advantage, cost-wise, over American manufacturers. This is creating an unfair trade situation. To correct this, we could either introduce our own healthcare system, or pressure the other countries into giving up theirs. The latter isn't going to happen. Americans are the only people in the G8 who are suicidally hell-bent on being unhealthy. As I see it, we have either the option of continuing our status (which I suspect will soon be confirmed to be "The Least Healthy of the G8") while losing manufacturing, or we could decide that being poor and unhealthy is a pretty miserable state and finally join the rest of the civilized world.

Also, I think the statistics regarding the overall health and life expectancy of our inner-cities speak for themselves -- they're like third-world countries. Since the libertarians among us don't seem to care about the human cost of their moronic policies, I'll just mention that a more healthy populace is a more productive populace and leave it at that. As for objections to a universal healthcare system a la Canada, I say: "Surely you don't suggest that we can't do better than the Canadians?"

Essentially, Ford (and probably to some extent, GM) has become a company that builds small cars so that it can sell large trucks.

So, are you saying Ford (and to some extent, GM) are selling trucks when no one wants to buy them? Gee, I wish there was something us consumers could do. Maybe not buy trucks? No, that wouldn't work, would it? Ford (and to some extent, GM) force us to buy their trucks. It's a crime.

Graculus, have you read any of the articles on CEPR?

Actually, no. However a quick persual of their work does not indicate any particularly "leftist" leanings. Perhaps you would point out what you feel is "leftist".

Roman: "The real Bill of Rights is enforceable. The Second one would be one big pile of good intentions. You can tell precisely whether your right of free expression is taken away, but how to tell whether your education was "good" or not?"

Or: how to tell whether bail is "excessive"? Or whether a punishment is "cruel and unusual"? Or whether school prayers equate to the "establishment of religion"?

The new rights would be interpreted by the courts, just like the others.

Molly writes:

Then let the churches keep their "sacred institution" as freakin' sacred as they want. Let them refuse to perform marriage ceremonies for whomever they like ... Fine--just don't expect society at large to play by your insular, xenophobic rules.

Hear, hear! But for all I care, one could as easily retain the 'marriage' label for the civil institution, so long as one maintains the distinction between marriage as a secular civil partnership and (for those who want it) marriage as a religious ceremony. Indeed that is the way it already is in much of Europe. To be married in the civil sense, one goes down to the town hall and registers. Then one is married for all civil purposes. (And in answer to the obvious question: yes, some European countries have started extending this right to same-sex couples, and hopefully the remaining civilised countries on the continent will join them soon.) If in addition one wishes to seek the blessing of a priest or rabbi or shaman or blue-painted Pictish druid, that is one's own affair; it in no way affects one's civil status as 'married'.

Conversely, if a clergyperson thinks a member of her flock is married in the eyes of God/Zeus/Crom/J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs only after she has sprinkled them with newt's lymph while chanting 'Booga-booga-booga', fair play to her. And if elderly paedophiles in silken robes and pointy hats wish to bar gays from their altars, that is their good right, so long as they don't confuse that right with a right to interfere in civil-law matters.

Paper ballots

Too easy to erase. I say let's go back to stone tablets and chisels.

(Many of the other proposals are stone-age too. So much for the left providing a viable alternative to the Religious Right)

Dustin: I seem to remember an auto plant that moved/expanded in Canada and not the US because of the health care here ...

Molly, when I first heard someone propose a system like the one you mention, I thought it sounded good, but probably too radical for this country.

Then I thought about it a while, and realized that it actually is the only thing that makes sense... And further, it's the only possible system that would be constitutional, as the current one - the government recognizing religious views and even giving tax breaks for them, etc. is clearly unconstitutional.

This idea is simple, workable, and would satisfy any reasonable person whether religious or not.

And now that you point out it is in use in other countries and works well, that's yet more evidence that it's the correct course.

All of which means of course that it's far too radical for this country.

"The minimum wage is a tool to ensure that people can earn enough when working that they can live of the wage."

It doesn't do that. If you want a minimum wage that accomplishes that stated goal, if you were *serious* about wanting to accomplish that goal, you would be talking about increasing the minimum wage by a multiplier that would happily crash the economy.

What is interesting to me about this thread is not any specific proposal but rather the ideas that (1) forced wealth redistribution is either a moral right or an ethical imparitive, (2) forced wealth redistribution is a viable tool for funding programs to cure society's ills, and (3) that any of you individually, no matter how smart, is smarter than the collective economic decisions that compose market forces. For each socialist-style proposal there are people saying their way is the right way to spend everyone's money, until the next person says no, that's wrong and broken, my way is the best way to spend everyone's money.

These government intiatives make us lazy. Rather than forcing us to make economic decisions for ourselves based on criteria we consider to be important, we rely on government to make decisions on our behalf. Lazy.

In re-reading my posted comment, I should have also added to the end that not only do we rely on government to make decisions on our behalf, but they do so with the force of a pointed gun.

I'm down with all of the things PZM advocates. Question: What is the chance of any of them becoming reality? Will the Democrats ever break the Republican dictatorship, and will we just end up with Jeb Bush in the Whote House in '08?

Ford (and to some extent, GM) force us to buy their trucks. It's a crime.

Guh? I think you missed my point, which is that CAFE is ineffective, and has fairly silly results. Go back and re-read my comment.

Restore the science advisor to the President of the United States to a cabinet-level position.

rather than a high fuel tax or higher CAFE standards, have a federal tax on the vehicle based on the fuel efficiency for that model. For example, you could have a 300 percent tax on the price of a Hummer, and no tax on the price of a Prius. This way, people would be encouraged to buy more fuel-efficient models, while wealthy assholes with no concern for anybody else will be able to continue to buy grossly inefficient vehicles. Poor assholes, however, will be out of luck.

Chris Rock had a good line about minimum wage:

If someone's paying you minimum wage, they're saying "I'd pay you less if I could."

I think they should abolish the minimum wage. Why keep the people you say you care about at the minimum forever?
Especially with it tied to CPI? How many people are at the minimum wage that has a family? Show me the numbers. I think the answer would be very few or very transient. Look at the same people a few years down the road. Poor people don't stay that way forever.

You are the one making the claims, not me, so it's up to you backing up your claims with numbers. I can tell you that NY Times took a look at how transient people were in the US compared to Europe, and unlike what is common wisdom, people are more transient in Europe.

A job paying minimum wage is a start. People shouldn't be at them for very long. A person seeking a better paying job helps society. A higher minimum wage keeps people down and out. They don't have to move up because the pay is livable.

Interesting claim, yet as have already been shown to you, it doesn't correlates with the facts. It doesn't even fit with economic theory, not even with the Chicago school of economy, which never really looked at wages dynamics anyway.
Also, why is it necessary for people to try get higher paid jobs? What is society's benifit of forcing people to find higher paid jobs, by paying too little, which is what you describe?

Dustin: I seem to remember an auto plant that moved/expanded in Canada and not the US because of the health care here ...

Yeah, I just added that little riff at the end because, whenever I have this conversation, someone seems to pipe up with some nonsense about the Canadians having a terrible healthcare system -- it was pre-emptive snark, and necessary at that, since almost everyone who tries to shoot down this universal healthcare idea seems to be impervious to statistics.

Since I started messing around with cars in the early '70's, power has just about doubled while gas mileage has stayed about the same.

Somehow we all got around back then despite the lower horsepower. All the modern cars have done is put more power at the command of people who are talking on cell phones. Whoopeeee - we can accelerate faster while we warm up the planet.

If you force the manufacturers to meet sensible fuel standards (say, 25mpg for pickups and 35mpg for passenger cars including SUV's) no jobs will be lost. People still have to drive something.

Also, why is it necessary for people to try get higher paid jobs? What is society's benefit of forcing people to find higher paid jobs, by paying too little, which is what you describe?

Think about it. I think you're almost there. It's like evolution, looking for a higher paying job forces you to get more fit. You have to compete with other candidates otherwise you won't get hired.

Minimum wage is a floor, not a ceiling. If you raise minimum wage it comes closer to the ceiling then people won't have to get off the floor.

Davis: Go back and re-read my comment.

Well it was late when I first read it. It seemed to me you were implying that Ford (and to some extent, GM) wanted to sell trucks and the consumer be damned. The ineffectiveness of CAFE proves once again the law of unintended consequences.

If the idea is to save oil, shouldn't the requirements of CAFE be the other way? If all cars got 5 miles to the gallon, I know I'd do a lot less driving.

Saying that various forms of governmental abuse of power are "bad" isn't going to cut it. We need to establish that they are illegal, unpardonable, and ethical atrocities.

Regarding CAFE standards: As Davis indicated, the way the standards are calculated seem to have been twisted into the current travesty by the automakers as a means of deferring responsibility for designing safe, fuel efficient cars. Detroit has lobbied to exempt SUVs and large trucks as "work" vehicles ("let's haul a dozen bales of hay" kind of work, not "I'm a solo commuter on my way to my sushi restaurant" kind of work), and even gotten tax rebates to boot, rather than deal with what it would take to produce vehicles that are "good for America."

I know, that's a squishy liberal phrase. But you know what? What's good for General Motors is NOT necessarily good for America. In fact, fuck General Motors. The fact is (oh no! Gary Ruppert sighting!) that the automakers have the money and the technology to increase fuel economy substantially with limited impact to their bottom line. The line that smaller cars are less safe than big ones is a canard; recent innovations in safety features, as well as the increased hazards of certain types of large-vehicle accidents, are bringing the safety question to a draw.

Some people on this board and in this discussion think that government telling industry what to do and how to do it is somehow un-American -- that regulation is the enemy of what's good for America. Well, fuck Ronald Reagan and his deregulation fantasies too; the Founding Fathers had the right instinct in limiting the power of corporations, and it's a damn shame that the corrupting influence of money has won out over those intentions. I say government has every right to impose regulations on corporations and industry segments, especially in those areas which are a threat to national security (one of the few areas of governance that our libertarian brethren deign to allow). In the meanwhile, as Dustin so sagaciously points out above, General Motors can use their filthy lobbying money to demand universal government healthcare, since the lack of such is a drag on all American business, and that makes us uncompetitive, and there's nothing a red-blooded Capitalist hates more than to play a game where the rules are set up against only him.

Finally, Caledonian, since you decried the slogan-like nature of the proposals, what do you make of this policy proposal:

Redefine CAFE standards to exclude big vehicles by closing the "commercial-use" exemption. A commercial-use vehicle is defined as that for which the majority (>50%) of the registered vehicles with the California DMV are registered as such.
Increase CAFE standards to 35 mpg by the 2011 model year.
Increase to 40 mpg by 2014.
Increase to 45 mpg by 2018, with no model less than 38mpg.

If we're going to argue, at least let's do it on the merits of the proposal, not an objection to an understandably annoying feel-good slogan.

This ties into what I was saying earlier (I know, everyone here reads TMW, but here it is anyway):
http://thismodernworld.com/2892
http://thismodernworld.com/2891

Well, at least we're marginally better at preventing infant mortality than the Latvians. But who can blame us? I mean, competing with Latvian medical technology is really hard.

Now, as for this:

If the idea is to save oil, shouldn't the requirements of CAFE be the other way? If all cars got 5 miles to the gallon, I know I'd do a lot less driving.

Are you trying to be stupid? The amount of driving that people do isn't going to increase without bound as a result of increasing fuel economy -- there's a time consideration there as well. Since we're already driving nearly as much as is humanly possible, any increase in fuel efficiency will only decrease consumption.

Let's have a little look at what a decrease in fuel economy will do for us:
1. People would likely drive less, but still probably spend the same amount of money on fuel as they are now, so the consumption wouldn't drop, just the utility of that consumption.
2. Some driving is necessary (take a trip to Nebraska sometime and count trucks on I-80). That kind of shipping won't decrease substantially, so fuel consumption will increase, along with the price of everything else.

Next time, try using the gray matter before using the keyboard.

Redefine CAFE standards to exclude big vehicles by closing the "commercial-use" exemption. A commercial-use vehicle is defined as that for which the majority (>50%) of the registered vehicles with the California DMV are registered as such.
Increase CAFE standards to 35 mpg by the 2011 model year.
Increase to 40 mpg by 2014.
Increase to 45 mpg by 2018, with no model less than 38mpg.

Better. Much better.

Ideally, consumer demand would moderate corporate behavior, just as ideally educated, intelligent citizens would moderate govermental behavior. Unfortunately, the reality is that people are stupid apes, and as such inevitably create hierarchial command structures.

Think about it. I think you're almost there. It's like evolution, looking for a higher paying job forces you to get more fit. You have to compete with other candidates otherwise you won't get hired.

Minimum wage is a floor, not a ceiling. If you raise minimum wage it comes closer to the ceiling then people won't have to get off the floor.

Nonsense. Not only are you badly misrepresenting evolution, you have no real understanding of neither economics nor wage theories. Hardly surprising if your only knowledge comes through Friedman's books.

To elaborate a bit more on my last comment, the problem with Nature's ideas is that he doesn't understand simple things like supply and demand, the cost of education etc.

In teh US there is a surplus of supply of labor in teh fields that pays minimum wages, thus the price paid for that labor (the wages) will be as low as possible - i.e. the minimum wage. If the price becomes too low, the suppliers don't even have the option of not supplying, as they do in other suplly/demand situations, since they need the money - instead they are forced to supply even more (have two jobs).

When people get skilled/trained, their value raises for their employer by a factor X. The price of training someone else to the same level of skills/training. This emans that the employer is willing to pay a certain part of X to the employee to ensure that he or her stays. This price is added to the already found price (let's call it Y), which is the minimum wage. So the employee will get Y+ X/Z, where Z is the part of X that the employer is willing to share with the employee (in certain companies X/Z is indistinguisable with 0). So, a lower minimum wage will just lead to skilled/trained workers getting less pay as well.

Of course, there is always the possibility of getting an education for a field where the demand outstrips the supply, thus pressing the wages up. However, an education costs a certain amount of money, and if you are in a situation where you have to live of minimum wages, it's quite likely that you can't save enough money to get the education, and that you're not credit-worthy. You can hope for a scholarship, but there isn't really that many of those around.

It's precisely because of all these things that minimum wages exist.

Of course, there is always the possibility of getting an education for a field where the demand outstrips the supply, thus pressing the wages up. However, an education costs a certain amount of money, and if you are in a situation where you have to live of minimum wages, it's quite likely that you can't save enough money to get the education, and that you're not credit-worthy. You can hope for a scholarship, but there isn't really that many of those around.

And besides that, that surplus of demand is always temporary (as long as we're not talking about something dangerous like crab fishing). As soon as their training is complete, people will flood the field looking for the disproportionally high pay it offers and there will suddenly be a surplus of trained people, and that'll drive the wages through the floor. Also, for reasons you've already cited, Americans tend not to be the most upwardly mobile members of the industrial world.

Kristjan, which Friedman are you talking about? I haven't read Milton Friedman, but if you're talking about Thomas Friedman's pro-globalization books, then I must say that having read The World is Flat, I got the impression that he'd agree with you about raising the minimum wage.

When people get skilled/trained, their value raises for their employer by a factor X.

Wrong.

When people gain skills, if their new skills place them in a limited working population where demand outstrips supply, their value increases. It's a matter of sticking out from the crowd. New skills that do not contribute to productivity (or aren't perceived as contributing) do not increase worker value. New skills that don't set the employee apart from the general population do not increase worker value. New skills that don't even act as a suitable marker for intelligence, hard work, or competence do not increase worker value.

There was a time when having a high school degree set employees apart, ensuring that they could compete for the better, higher-paying jobs. So we made everyone get a high-school degree, and now it's virtually worthless. Then having a college degree became the new key to success, and now more and more people are getting them... which makes them worthless as signals, and ensures that there's a massive supply without nearly as much demand.

Of course, there is always the possibility of getting an education for a field where the demand outstrips the supply, thus pressing the wages up. However, an education costs a certain amount of money, and if you are in a situation where you have to live of minimum wages, it's quite likely that you can't save enough money to get the education, and that you're not credit-worthy. You can hope for a scholarship, but there isn't really that many of those around.

Wow you had some things going for you up until here. This is very reflective of "I want it all now, right now, and it's never going to be available if government doesn't force someone to give it to me."

The implication by your post is essentially that education is the only path upward. So first (and rather so obviously I hate to even mention it), education is not, and never has been, the only way for one to make more than the bare minimum. Hell, that's one of the reasons nepotism was the primary vehicle for business succession for centuries. Beyond that, there is also experience. Someone of a certain level of education may rise not by virtue of additional education but by the staying power within a field that gives them the requisite experience to increase their value to the employer.

Second, you have nothing to back your assertion that affordable education isn't available to even those without much by way of means. Maybe it takes time to save. Maybe it takes a lot of effort to find a charitable educational organization (there would be a hell of a lot more of those around if we weren't all taxed so much). Of course, you could just force everyone to go through school through the university level and tax everyone to pay for it, but what have you just done? Set a new flooded floor. What's next, everyone is entitled to taxpayer-funded graduate-level degrees?

Just having the perseverence to stick with your job for a period of time increases your value relative to those people who don't even have the discipline or desire to stay with one job for very long (and if that's not you then I can guarantee you have a friend for whom that description applies, you know it's true).

And besides that, that surplus of demand is always temporary (as long as we're not talking about something dangerous like crab fishing). As soon as their training is complete, people will flood the field looking for the disproportionally high pay it offers and there will suddenly be a surplus of trained people, and that'll drive the wages through the floor.

Except not everyone is willing to make the effort to raise themselves up to the next level, and there are so many different specializations of skill that any move upwards puts you in a much slimmer pool of supply for a given market. Unless, of course, you for everyone to pay taxes to fund a system where everyone gets roughly the same education, in which case it would be true that all you've done is elevated the floor.

Caledonian's comment is spot-on as well, and in the same vein.

Kristjan, which Friedman are you talking about? I haven't read Milton Friedman, but if you're talking about Thomas Friedman's pro-globalization books, then I must say that having read The World is Flat, I got the impression that he'd agree with you about raising the minimum wage.

I am talking about Milton Friedman, who certainly doesn't agree with me. On the other hand, he doesn't seem to understand the barriers to getting better jobs/educations, so it's hardly surprising.

Myrddin: If you think affordable education exists past the highschool level, you're insane.

The tuition at the absolute cheapest college in my state is a mere 8k a year. That's "affordable" ... except for the fact that while doing this, you cannot work the two or three minimum-wage jobs required to survive, let alone get sufficient excess to cover it.

And let's hope you don't have children - if you do, not only do you need enough additional money to feed/clothe/etc them, you need to pay someone to take care of them whenever you're not going to be home (which, if you're working AND going to college will be pretty much all the time.)

And experience only matters if employers are willing to pay experience more - most are not. Certainly, not in any of the "at-will" states is it the case that experience gets you more in a minimum-wage job - if you SHOULD get more, what you really get is let go.

Yes, apparently I am insane to think that one could go to collge part-time to lower the cost per year and be more accomodating of someone who already works. Apparently one is now "insane" if you don't get something you want on the terms you want it when you want it. Apparently it is insane to think that for most minimum wage people a trade school isn't a large step up (does that 8k-a-year figure include the most affordable trade school evening, weekend and night classes?), the type of school used to educating and helping to finance low-income individuals.

And you know what? When you have children, they are your job, they are your responsibility. If you can't afford to go to higher education and pay extra child care expenses for you to go to school, then you may have to put off higher education and rely on the experience you gain at work for modest gains in pay. Maybe, just maybe, the dispersal of the family unit hasn't been 100% of a good thing. It used to be that one could rely on fairly tightly-georgraphically-grouped extended family unit to help defray child care expenses.

The entitlement mentality never ceases to amaze me.

I also want to point out that if you think the current minimum wage or any modest increase in minimum wage is gonig to make a significant difference in the standard of living for people who have such jobs, maybe I'm not the only one who needs his head examined. To have the kind of wage that affords people the "I want it now" opportunities you're talking about you would have to start with some kind of minimum wage multipler.

Life is hard. Maybe we should enact France's labor laws and be done with it. Would that work?

myrddin raised some points, which I will try to address.

Wow you had some things going for you up until here. This is very reflective of "I want it all now, right now, and it's never going to be available if government doesn't force someone to give it to me."

We were debaiting the merits of minimum wages, which in its very nature is regulatory, so obviously minimum wages won't be available if the government (or at least the state) doesn't force someone. Except in the case of Denmark, where the minimum wages are part of an agreement between the unions and the Employers' interest organizations. Here the two partners (the unions and the employers' organizations) enforces the minimum wages among their members.
In other words, people can get something without the government forcing somone else to give it to them.

I am not of the opinion that everyone should have everything right now, and nowhere did I express that opinion. However, I am of the opinion that it's better for a society if it's possible for it's members to advance through efforts. Currently this doesn't seem to be the case in the US, where peoples' upwards mobility is very low compared to the EU, no matter if we look at the individual or if we look at across generations. And the ground level in the US is lower in the US than in Europe, which makes this even worse.

The implication by your post is essentially that education is the only path upward. So first (and rather so obviously I hate to even mention it), education is not, and never has been, the only way for one to make more than the bare minimum.

If you are at the minimum level, education or training is pretty much the only path upwards. There are exceptions, but they are that, exceptions.

Hell, that's one of the reasons nepotism was the primary vehicle for business succession for centuries.

People who benifits from nepotism rarely starts at the minimum level. They might end up there, or end up as the President of the US, depending on their connections, but they rarely start at either position.

Beyond that, there is also experience. Someone of a certain level of education may rise not by virtue of additional education but by the staying power within a field that gives them the requisite experience to increase their value to the employer.

That was what I was talking about in the part about becoming more skilled/trained. Experience is worthless unless it can be utiliced as skills - having 20 years of experience as a cashier won't earn you much more than the fresh new employee.

Second, you have nothing to back your assertion that affordable education isn't available to even those without much by way of means. Maybe it takes time to save. Maybe it takes a lot of effort to find a charitable educational organization (there would be a hell of a lot more of those around if we weren't all taxed so much).

What I use as a data points is the cost of the education, and the fact that many people on minimum wages live below the proverty line. These two things makes it possible for me to deduce that it's not possible for them to save up for an education (did you read the part about them being without health insurance? do you know what the number one bankruptcy cause is in the US? medicinal emergencies).
Also, let me address the part about taking the effort to find those charitable organizations that can help you. if you are working full time to make ends meet, and still have to worry about basic things like food for your child, such an effort is very hard. Also, given the fact that many of these people come from a similar childhood as their own children are having, they might not have the right requirements to get a higher education. High school is not necessary something you can prioritize, while helping earning money to the family as a teenager.

Of course, you could just force everyone to go through school through the university level and tax everyone to pay for it, but what have you just done? Set a new flooded floor. What's next, everyone is entitled to taxpayer-funded graduate-level degrees?

This is a false dictionomy. The alternative isn't necessarily to force people to go through to the universty level. Instead it might be making it possible for people to earn enough to go through to university level if they so choose, or to make educations tax funded, so people who have the right requisites can get an education.

And the idea that you seem to mock, that everyone is entitled to taxpayer-funded graduate-level degrees, is actually the reality in several countries. Of course, people have to qualify for those educations through continious hard work at school, but if they seize their chance, the education is available for them.
Those countries, and the tax payers in those countries, regards this as a good investment.

Just having the perseverence to stick with your job for a period of time increases your value relative to those people who don't even have the discipline or desire to stay with one job for very long (and if that's not you then I can guarantee you have a friend for whom that description applies, you know it's true).

I have never stuck around in a job for longer than 3 years, and don't particularly plan to do so. You know why? Because I don't increase my value relatively to those people - I just get stuck in the same rutines, while changing jobs will ensure I come across new stuff that I have to learn, while I bring a fresh view on their problems.
Also, it has been shown that in general the big wage increases happens when you change employers, not while you raise in the same company.

Currently this doesn't seem to be the case in the US, where peoples' upwards mobility is very low compared to the EU, no matter if we look at the individual or if we look at across generations.

I would be happy to take a look at the stats on that. Linkage? At best, all I've been able to find is that there are plenty of conflicting opinions on the subject, such as:

http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.18720/article_detail.asp

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-05/2005-05-23-voa11.cfm

http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/01/1044&…

etc.

The last one is the most EU-favorable, it is also the oldest, which isn't to say one way or another rightly or wrongly but just that I don't see any unanimous support for your contention.

The only other thing is one I have oft-repeated in this thread. All of you talking about how hard it is and how expensive it is to get a good higher education on minimum wage, what kind of a minimum wage do you think would *really* make a difference? I figure we're talking about at least, a bare minimum, a multiple 2 of, maybe more, just for people to have a shot at the kind of society-wide opportunities you are talking about. We're not talking about a bump of $.50 or $1.00/hour, that's not going to have a material impact.

I have never stuck around in a job for longer than 3 years, and don't particularly plan to do so. You know why? Because I don't increase my value relatively to those people - I just get stuck in the same rutines, while changing jobs will ensure I come across new stuff that I have to learn, while I bring a fresh view on their problems.

I'm not sure what you're arguing for here. I'm basically saying that if you're "stuck" in a minimum wage job, you probably have a realistic shot of earning modest amounts more by sticking with it--most employers will give modest pay increases for dependable current employees rather than re-train a new employee who may or may not be dependable, or mentally stable. My friends who drift from low-paying job to low-paying job never seem to accumulate the experience necessary to crack that level that makes somewhat regular lateral transfers so profitable. Then again, they're also the types for whom "new stuff" is scary and hard to learn.

Are you saying low-wage earners would be better off making more lateral moves or less?

Kristan Wager: Also, it should probably be mentioned that the general tax structure of the US is pretty much flat, rather than progressive.

It depends on how you define flat. According to this page on Tax Foundation Tax Data they give the rates as:

Top 1% is 24% rate they pay 34% of all taxes
Top 5% is 20% rate they pay 54% of all taxes
Top 10% is 18% rate they pay 66% of all taxes
Top 25% is 15% rate they pay 84% of all taxes
Top 50% is 13% rate they pay 96% of all taxes
for 2003.

Kristjan: What you seem to be ignoring is that while the government can pull *money* out of its ass, it cannot pull *wealth* out of its ass.

The economy cannot consume more than it produces, and any large-scale attempt to do so leads to hyperinflation.

If you say something like "everyone deserves a decent home" - who builds those homes? Out of what materials? Where do you even get the land for all those homes? The same problem applies to medical care, to clothing, even to food.

Now, if you're saying the world would be a better place if everyone had a productive job and health care and a good home, of course I agree. But you can't simply wave a magic wand at the problem and order it to go away. Health care and homes are the product of *work* - quite a lot of work - and the total amount that society gets out of the economy can't exceed the amount it puts in.

That's why economic reform - either here or in the developing world - HAS to start with education and infrastructure. Until you increase the economic output of the society, it doesn't matter how you divide things up, there just isn't enough to go around to cover everything you want to cover.

And if you let your standards of "necessity" keep sliding upward, then you're on a treadmill - you can *never* have everyone earn an above-median income, or have an above-median education or standard of living. The moment keeping up with the Joneses is considered a necessity, let alone a fundamental right, that society is doomed to fail - by its own standards, at least. (Even though its homeless people may still have a longer expected lifespan than the crowned heads of a few centuries ago.)

This is all interesting. But meanwhile, gay folks and our issues drop to the bottom of the liberal agenda. Again. In the original post by Atrio, we were barely an afterthought.

I love this site dearly, but I often wish leftys would cover their lavender bases a little better. The Right has been winning election after election by playing the queer card, and the Left pretends not to notice. Ohio fell in 2004 not because people didn't care about bankruptcy bills and underfunded pensions but because anti-gay churches were mobilized at the last minute.

It's not that we gay people think marriage or military service are such wonderful institutions, it's just that we want the choice, like all of you have, to embrace them or turn them down. And even if you don't care about my right to adopt kids or marry the guy I love, the Republicans care a great deal.

Pay attention! The people who put creationism in
schoolrooms are the same people who hate fags. You just watch. The Right will again win elections this coming November by distracting voeters with homosexuality, and Pharyngulites will themselves still be distracted by bankruptcy bills and underfunded pensions. Very, very frustrating.

Interesting point. I think gays get hidden in the back of the party in much the same way atheists do, and for some of the same reasons: the party operatives don't want to fight that fight, and they know that when we go to the ballot box, we'll have to vote for them anyway because we all know the Republicans are worse.

Choosing the party that marginalizes your concerns over the party that demonizes you and spews hate rhetoric at you isn't a very *attractive* choice, but we're kinda stuck with it - and the party knows it. They don't have to do anything to pull us in when the other party is doing so much to push us away. (Using "us" here to mean both atheists and gays, since the observation seems to apply equally to both. I wonder if the analogy can be taken a step further to where some party strategists call on the "militant gays" to shut up and stop endangering the party's electoral success by driving away all the liberal heterosexuals... or would the bigotry of that be just *too* obvious?)

Personally, I'd like to kill all religious-based laws with no secular purpose, which I definitely think includes laws on who can marry whom or what kind of sex they can have; but that agenda doesn't seem to have much chance of passing anytime soon. Unfortunately, the Constitution is not quite clear enough about setting certain personal freedoms beyond the reach of democratic fads the way it does with political freedoms like speech and assembly. Amendment might help there, but again, probably not enough popular support.

A more hopeful sign is that most younger people seem to take a "who cares" attitude toward most minority forms of sexuality, including homosexuality; so once enough reactionary old fogies die, support for bigotry may wane. (Sometimes I think that *all* social progress is measured in funerals...)

Voting for the lesser of two evils is a great way to ensure that the government becomes progressively more evil... which is exactly what's happened, as far as I can tell.

I think that myrddin's policies are poor economics; they are penny-wise and pound-foolish. Let's consider how a branch of the government that I presume he endorses, the military, works.

It subsidizes the training of its employees -- you don't have to pay to go to Boot Camp, as far as I know. And the same is true for further training, as far as I am aware. At least nobody has to spend exorbitant sums to get into Officer Training.

And the same is true of businesses and their employees -- you don't have to pay some big sum just to learn your way around in the business.

It makes good economic sense to subsidize post-secondary education, because otherwise students would find it hard to afford much education. Consider it an investment on a society-wide scale.

As to private charity making up the difference, it would not exist in capitalism groupies' ideal society, because in their ideal society, anything bad that happens to you is your own fault, and you don't deserve to be bailed out.

So all that would happen is an emergence of wealth-based aristocracy, where rich people's faithful lackeys would lecture everybody else on what lazy bums they are, how it is all their fault that they don't have rich parents to help them get good positions.

I think that myrddin's policies are poor economics; they are penny-wise and pound-foolish. Let's consider how a branch of the government that I presume he endorses, the military, works.

Uh, I'm assuming that even someone hyper-critical of the Iraq War endorses the concept of having a military for national self defense. Right? I mean, are you saying you do not endorse having a standing army? You might have gotten away with that in American Revolutionary times (and some notables did indeed favor no standing armies), but today? That's really your position?

Otherwise, count me as a libertarian who does not favor intrusive foreign policy, and who opposes the invasion of Iraq--although the reasons for and possible solutions to are not the topic of this thread. But only the most radical libertarians (beyond even most Randians) would favor privating national security (I don't). Of course all of that training is subsidized, as far as I am concerned it is one of the few legitimate functions of a federal government.

And the same is true of businesses and their employees -- you don't have to pay some big sum just to learn your way around in the business.

Are you discounting the cost of training new employees versus retaining and paying more for dependable existing employees? I work in manufacturing and I can tell you for a fact that training an unknown new employee is not seen as preferrable to retaining or even promoting a dependable existing employee. Maybe my company is unique in the world.

As to private charity making up the difference, it would not exist in capitalism groupies' ideal society, because in their ideal society, anything bad that happens to you is your own fault, and you don't deserve to be bailed out

This makes 0 sense. 0. Even today with taxes as high as they are there are private scholarship organizations that help thousands of kids pay for all or part of their post-high school education. In a "capitalism groupies' ideal society" we would all have more money to contribute to those charities we see fit, which would certainly include those chraities and philanthropic organizations whose mission it is to help young adults through secondary education. Is the 26 billion dollar Gates Foundation Bill & Melinda's way of saying that anything bad that happens to you is your own fault? I just have no idea what you're saying here, it makes no sense.

Some people are also making the assumption that since a little education is good, a lot is better.

At the moment, we can't even ensure that our mandatory primer system -- elementary and high schools -- can educate. Why would we want to concentrate on ensuring secondary education for everyone? For that matter, why would we want to lower the standards of secondary education enough so that a majority of the population could complete it?

It's not the explicit doctrines that are causing our society to collapse, it's the implicit assumptions that we do not permit ourselves to examine or even acknowledge.

Myrddin, youi are being impressively obtuse.

That 8k/year is a minimum cost. And when you work two full-time jobs, there simply is no "going to school part time".

If you think that Loren's statement that you, someone who's been coming across as believing that ALL government is evil, should endorse the military is a claim that Loren does *not* endorse the military, you are incapable of reading comprehension. If, as I suspect, you're merely trying to avoid answering the question because it would portray you in a negative light ... well, I, at least, can see throught it.

And if you just don't see the point that it's reasonable to subsidize training for things... that's ... interesting.

As for the "flooded floor" ... SO WHAT if the majority of our population has the same level of education? There is room for the skilled to prove so in college, and there is more room when they reach the workplace.
And even the not-so-skilled will still contribute more to our economy with a better education.

The only way to increase overall wealth is to produce more - and the only two ways to produce more are to either add more producers to the pool (which would be a little tricky to do, and would add more consumers), or to increase the average productivity.

And the simplest way to increase average productivity is education. Certainly America cannot hope to compete on cost per hour - but we can well and away compete on cost per productivity, at least in those businesses which support the education and training of their employees.

As for the concerns of the gays and the athiests... look. Special interest politics is one of the things that's hurting the Democratic party.

I'm in favor of gay marriage. If I were in a position to do so, I would vote for it. (I'm not, of course). However... fact is, if you try to address a single issue without looking at the whole system, you're not likely to get anywhere. Look at the causes of opposition to gay marriage - how can you alleviate/remove those? Yelling more loudly about how gays should be allowed to get married does nothing but strengthen the opposition.

As for the "flooded floor" ... SO WHAT if the majority of our population has the same level of education? There is room for the skilled to prove so in college, and there is more room when they reach the workplace.

That argument can be repeated with "high school" in place of "college". Why aren't you making *that* argument?

And even the not-so-skilled will still contribute more to our economy with a better education.

In what way? If everyone went to law school or medical colleges, and managed to do sufficiently well to graduate, we'd still need garbage collectors... and fast food cooks, and vegetable harvesters, and fruit pickers.

There are a finite number of good jobs in any economy, and they're always far less than the bad jobs. Who's going to do those unpleasant, tiring, and low-paying jobs? Immigrants? Trained and uplifted monkeys? Mechanical robots from beyond the Moon?

Regarding gay people, thank you, Chris. I agree.

And Michael, you missed the boat. I have never said that equal rights for gay people should stand alone, out of a larger progressive context. But if you're for an inclusive agenda, then include us!!!!!

For years the Left and the Dems have been dismissing us as single-issue, when in fact gay rights are fundamentally linked to civil rights and privacy rights and immigration rights and freedom of expression and freedom from religion, etc. My point was precisely that the Left is ignoring what the Right has so ably capitalized on: homophobia. They will continue to use gay people as a wedge issue as long as the Left continues to shy away from it.

At this very moment, they are planning a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. That will become a litmus vote for congresspeople, some of whom will cowardly go along. But the Dems never win by being more regressive than the Right. The solution is to stand up for what's right, call the Right's bluff. Take away from them their "monopoly" on speaking to the issue. That's what people will respect.

I really think that there is something insincere about celebration of private charity from the sort of person who says "You lazy bum! It's all your fault!"

As to training employees, myrddin could well be correct about training ones already in the company vs. new hires, but my point is that I doubt that it's a common policy to charge employees for the privilege of being trained for a job that they'll have to do in the company.

Also, libertarian arguments can easily be deployed against military and police forces and judges and jailers, because they provide the services of protection and adjudication of disputes. "You disgusting socialist! You want your protection to be financed with Other People's Money that had been extorted from them! You lazy bum! Take responsibility for your actions and protect yourself and hire your own bodyguards rather than begging the government to do it for you!"

-

More seriously, I'd like the voting system changed to be more third-party-friendly, so as to shake up the two-party duopoly. The system where each voter has only one vote to cast for each office (first-past-the-post or plurality voting) is OK when there are only two candidates, but not when there are more. This is because it leads to "strategic voting" and trying to decide which of the two major candidates is the lesser of two evils.

There are lots of alternatives, like approval voting (being able to vote for more than one candidate), preference voting (ranking the candidates by preference order, with various algorithms for finding an overall preference), and proportional representation. For more, see this Wikipedia article on voting systems; there's also an alternative-system advocacy group: FairVote.

If you think that Loren's statement that you, someone who's been coming across as believing that ALL government is evil, should endorse the military is a claim that Loren does *not* endorse the military, you are incapable of reading comprehension. If, as I suspect, you're merely trying to avoid answering the question because it would portray you in a negative light ... well, I, at least, can see throught it

It's a straw man, taking the most extreme libertarian position and trying to force me to argue for it as if the only consistent position is the most extreme one. I could just as easy flip it on a leftist . . . if government is so good, why not control everything? Why not embark on an experiment in true communism? One thing we know about Communist regimes to date is that they've done a particularly poor job of actually implementing communist ideals, so what's your excuse for not advocating total government control of all economic activity? Why stop there? Why not put government in charge of social activity also? Parents just screw their kids up, they can do crazy sh** like smoke in their own homes, be emotionally unstable, be cruel . . . government child raising centers would do a much more equitable job, plus then every child gets to start out exactly the same, no social advantages or disadvantages. Don't just repeal the estate tax repeal, make estate tax 100%! That way everyone starts out exactly equal, far fewer racial or social inequalities, plus you get a boost in tax revenue to fix every social problem!

So you'll excuse me if I don't go out of my way to support a position (the military should be privatized) that I don't support even though I do embrace libertarianism.

I really think that there is something insincere about celebration of private charity from the sort of person who says "You lazy bum! It's all your fault!"

If someone thinks that, then they should be entitled not to be forced to give their money to charity or for government handouts. Instead they should be entitled to spend their money for goods and services (creating more jobs, the horror!), or to save (creating more available investment capital), or to stuff in their mattress!

But on top of that I think your quote displays a very poor understanding of who libertarians are. Most do have charitable causes they are interested in, whether that is the environment, or education, or poverty, and we believe that private charities do more efficient work than the government. Are some people lazy? Sure some are. Do some people make poor decisions? Sure they do. Do I think the government is the best organization to provide incentives for people not to be lazy and continue to amke bad decisions? No I don't.

It's hardly a straw position when one sees endless bawling about how government does nothing but one bad thing after another bad thing after yet another bad thing.

Particularly when combined with an attitude that says that military and police forces deserve an absolutely blank check. Thus allowing for a LOT of statism under the pretext of "national defense".

And why haven't armies of mercenaries hired by Heroes of Capitalist Labor totally crushed statist armies?

And this idea of virtue as volunary is pure hokey; it seems to me to be a way of weaseling out of being charitable to others. It's like a thief lecturing everybody about how respect for property claims is a virtue only if it's voluntary.

Particularly when combined with an attitude that says that military and police forces deserve an absolutely blank check.

WhoTF said that? Who are you talking to here? Do you even know what a libertarian is? Are you actually reading the comments I'm posting? Are you having an invisible Comment conversation with someone else? If you are let me know so I can accomodate for it when reading your comments.

And this idea of virtue as volunary is pure hokey; it seems to me to be a way of weaseling out of being charitable to others.

What an absolutely bleak view of humanity you have. So the only path to charity to others is at the other end of a gun held by the government? I guess I actually didn't give blood to the Red Cross yesterday voluntarily. Hell no, that would have been hokey. Dammit, I'm not going to give blood again until the government forces me to go! That's the only way it will work, why can't people see that!?!