View Full Version : A thread about healthcare and debt and stuff
ADMIN EDIT: if this seems abrupt, that's because it was moved from another thread.
I believe Healthcare is a right for all in the same way the fire Dept sends trucks put out fires in the Ritzy neighborhoods and shatty ones alike.
We have a right to a fire department? Huh? Also, how do you justify this alleged "right" to health care, which involves another person having to provide a service for you? What if there are 10,000 people that have this alleged RIGHT to health care, but only 100 doctors are available to provide it on a particular Saturday but all these people demand they get care or they will call a violation of their civil rights? Do some people get blown off? Do they have to wait 6 months while a bunch of people force their "right to free healthcare" down the doctor's throats. What if the doctor refuses, do they go to jail? How is all this mediated?
"Hi Doc, I have a right to free health care, you better treat me now or I will have you arrested."
My GF works in the medical industry, and she runs into kooks that try to force offices into various situation EVERY SINGLE DAY. She works at a neurologist. These people have mental issues - do you think they are going to just pop into this new system and glide right along? She already has multiple patients that storm into the office trying to demand immediate attention/prescriptions/service and who go to ridiculous lengths to abuse what free services are already offered.
Here's a little anecdote...
She has this patient, let's call her Sally. Sally is on Mass Health or a similar service and gets her care for free. In the past year Sally has had 73 office visits and a ridiculous 234 visits to the ER. She skips hitting the ER on days she has office visits, but on some weekends, she has been known to hit the ER 5 times in 2 days. Here are the reasons for her visits: Unsettled Feeling, Itchy Skin, Skin Feels Hot, Hands are Clammy, Nervousness, Depression Disorder, Anxiety, Stress related headaches, Stress Related Stomach Ache, Cat Dander irritation (some people call it sneezing), Weather induced depression (raining outside and I feel kinda down), Loneliness.
They have to treat this woman every single time - on my dime.
When asked why she goes so much? "Because it's free, and I feel cared for there."
Cool, she feels cared for - but that's not what the ER is for!
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 01:50 PM
We have a right to a fire department? Huh? Also, how do you justify this alleged "right" to health care, which involves another person having to provide a service for you? What if there are 10,000 people that have this alleged RIGHT to health care, but only 100 doctors are available to provide it on a particular Saturday but all these people demand they get care or they will call a violation of their civil rights? Do some people get blown off? Do they have to wait 6 months while a bunch of people force their "right to free healthcare" down the doctor's throats. What if the doctor refuses, do they go to jail? How is all this mediated?
"Hi Doc, I have a right to free health care, you better treat me now or I will have you arrested."
My GF works in the medical industry, and she runs into kooks that try to force offices into various situation EVERY SINGLE DAY. She works at a neurologist. These people have mental issues - do you think they are going to just pop into this new system and glide right along? She already has multiple patients that storm into the office trying to demand immediate attention/prescriptions/service and who go to ridiculous lengths to abuse what free services are already offered.
Here's a little anecdote...
She has this patient, let's call her Sally. Sally is on Mass Health or a similar service and gets her care for free. In the past year Sally has had 73 office visits and a ridiculous 234 visits to the ER. She skips hitting the ER on days she has office visits, but on some weekends, she has been known to hit the ER 5 times in 2 days. Here are the reasons for her visits: Unsettled Feeling, Itchy Skin, Skin Feels Hot, Hands are Clammy, Nervousness, Depression Disorder, Anxiety, Stress related headaches, Stress Related Stomach Ache, Cat Dander irritation (some people call it sneezing), Weather induced depression (raining outside and I feel kinda down), Loneliness.
They have to treat this woman every single time - on my dime.
When asked why she goes so much? "Because it's free, and I feel cared for there."
Cool, she feels cared for - but that's not what the ER is for!
1st off this isn't the proper thread for this discussion, don't the mod's communicate?
2ndly,,sounds to me like the Kooky lady has mental issues, I'm not entirely sure the point of the anectote.
Oh and healthcare isnt free. Anybody that thinks it is literally thus is as delusional as Sally imo.
Its paid for through taxes
Which would never fly stateside. Y'all folks put everything on Credit, and raise the debt ceiling as it suits.
With Obama in the Whitehouse, its the first time in 30 years i can recall mention of the defecit in the US news media on a regular basis.
Didn't here jack squat about it with the multitude of War projects going on. Fun Fact- the constitution the Americans helped draft for the new iraq includes healthcare. lol
There isn't a politician up here that hasn't adressed the defecit while campaigning for federal office over the same 30 year stretch that hasn't adressed the defecit.
And none of em dare mess with healthcare, they'd be lynched in the street.
its a right. period.
Dex is correct; we should probably move this discussion. New thread, guys, or an existing one?
EDIT: done!
That said, this...
With Obama in the Whitehouse, its the first time in 30 years i can recall mention of the defecit in the US news media on a regular basis.
Didn't here jack squat about it with the multitude of War projects going on.
...is definitely not so. As a Republican, I heard about the deficit all-the-friggin'-time when Bush was in office, even though it was, at its worst, a third of what it is now.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 02:04 PM
Dex is correct; we should probably move this discussion. New thread, guys, or an existing one?
That said, this...
...is definitely not so. As a Republican, I heard about the deficit all-the-friggin'-time when Bush was in office, even though it was, at its worst, a third of what it is now.
From Republicans or just the other team maken waves?
Because that isn't what i mean.
edit: other than Ron Paul. he's been sounden the call for 20 years, but nobody takes him serious.
You said "in the US news media," so I didn't realize we were restricting this to Republicans. But from some, yes. Though as I've pointed out in other discussions, there are two things that would it far from hypocritical either way:
1) It's rational to be in favor of going into debt for something you find worthwhile, but not for something you don't. IE: a mortgage might be okay, but taking out a loan to go to Vegas isn't, unless you bring Dustin Hoffman with you.
2) It's not the same amount of money. $400 billion is not as bad as $1.2 trillion. I'd say it's about a third as bad. ;)
planet news
06-14-11, 02:18 PM
"Hi Doc, I have a right to free health care, you better treat me now or I will have you arrested." . . . Cool, she feels cared for - but that's not what the ER is for!This is seriously the worst "counterexample" I have ever heard against health care ever. First, for all the reasons Dex said. The woman is clearly a rarity. Most people don't want a thing to do with the doctor most of the time if they can avoid it. Going to the doctors is a hassle.
Except when you get sick and have to. That's when someone's life could be on the line, and yeah, I'd say there're a lot of good reasons why ethically it is a must to save that person.
Plus I heard a story like this just a while back on some elitist liberal news media show, and the fact is in countries where people can get away with doing this, it's not a problem for the people working, because since the person doesn't have any real problems, no real work has to be done to help that person. They just let them walk around and make conversation.
Oh and healthcare isnt free. Anybody that thinks it is literally thus is as delusional as Sally imo.
Its paid for through taxes
Which would never fly stateside. Y'all folks put everything on Credit, and raise the debt ceiling as it suits.
And none of em dare mess with healthcare, they'd be lynched in the street.
its a right. period.
No, it isn't a RIGHT. That's ridiculous, and I addressed why above. Also, my comment on 'free healthcare' was a lament about the fact that I pay for people to abuse the system - that was my whole point! So yeah...thanks for reinforcing it. :)
Healthcare isn't a right.
Here's some rights:
Right to free speech - Does this right require someone else to provide some sort of task or service for you in order to recognize this right? Negative.
Right to bear arms - exercised by one person, on their own, with no requirement from other people, except that they recognize the right.
I just need to know how a right would work when it centers around tasks and duties that are provided by someone else... I am not smart enough to come up with a way it makes sense or wouldn't be a giant Cluster F.
I'm off-topic, I know - I am fine with a different thread! i had just wanted to reply to one of Dex's posts in this thread.
will.15
06-14-11, 02:31 PM
This defecit started under Bush when he started the bank bailouts and if it wasn't done we would be looking at unemployment closer to twenty percent.
I doubt any of the major Republicans currently running for President except maybe Bachmann wouldn't have done the same thing (Ron Paul isn't a major candidate) if they were in office when the crisis hit, despite what they now say. Reality sometimes makes ideological purity unimportant. The auto bailout maybe not, but it is a real success story. If the auto industy in this country was reduced to one company it would have also bankrupted many other firms in this country that supplied the manufacturing parts. And the Obama Administration by taking the risky stance of putting restrictions and demands on the auto industry for the bailout, something the Bush Admistration was reluctant to do, they actually helped to save the industry.
will.15
06-14-11, 02:32 PM
Well... I don't really see the point in continuing, since no one cares.
Won't embed for some reason.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnzcLoxIXHI
This defecit started under Bush when he started the bank bailouts and if it wasn't done we would be looking at unemployment closer to twenty percent.
"The deficit started" is a weird phrase. You make it sound like a ball rolling down a hill, rather than a series of decisions. It doesn't matter if he "started it," what matters is that we keep adding to it so that it's now several times the size it was when people were tearing into Bush for it.
Also, the idea that the bank bailouts were necessary to avoid 20% unemployment is unmitigated nonsense. It's part of Obama's convenient "jobs created or saved" (emphasis mine) pseudo-statistic. It's a handy phrase, because it isn't based in anything observable or empirical. No matter how bad things are (and they're way, WAY worse than the Obama administration promised us they would be if only they got their stimulus), they can always say it would have been worse.
I doubt any of the major Republicans currently running for President except maybe Bachmann wouldn't have done the same thing (Ron Paul isn't a major candidate) if they were in office when the crisis hit, despite what they now say. Reality sometimes makes ideological purity unimportant. The auto bailout maybe not, but it is a real success story.
It is not a success story for several reasons which I've detailed in another thread. To summarize: an interest-free loan is not a good investment, the bar must be insanely low if merely getting our money back is considered awesome, and it doesn't factor in the very basic economic idea of opportunity cost. I'll add something to that list, too: it shortchanged the people the automakers were in debt to. Many of them were not paid, despite having legitimate claims on the debt. You know who made out, instead? The autoworkers union. They now own more of the company than they did before. This is a blatant political favoritism and terrible economics.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 02:44 PM
No, it isn't a RIGHT. That's ridiculous, and I addressed why above. Also, my comment on 'free healthcare' was a lament about the fact that I pay for people to abuse the system - that was my whole point! So yeah...thanks for reinforcing it. :)
Healthcare isn't a right.
We don't live in the same Country. You don't pay for squat.
We live in a Society Mike. not a private island where you command all that you survey.
Chain is only as strong as the weakest link.
no idea who said that originally but there is some merit to that.
The idea up here is basically that a healthy educated populace serves the commen good, more-so than the alternative.
Having said that, can't force somebody to go to College or University, but if they want to go, and have the marks for admission, they won't be held back because they live on wrong side of tracks, nor will their folks have to lose the house if grandpa's pace-maker isn;t doing the trick anymore and bypass surgery is required.
Its a different Country.
here its a right.
Your forefathers footed the bill for the Marshall Plan that included a kick-ass universal healthcare system ironically enough.
But it was temporary, no? Either way, I think one could make a reasonable case that World War 2 was a special situation.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 02:54 PM
really. which European Country doesn't enjoy universal heathcare to this day?
No, I mean, our sponsorship or endorsement of it. What they do after rebuilding is up to them. Obviously we don't think it's awesome permanently, or else we'd have done it ourselves.
But in that same vein, how many European countries enjoy universal healthcare and don't find themselves either going broke or having to dramatically reform the system for fear of going broke? It seems to happen to almost all of them.
The debt, it's worth remembering, is not just "should this be?" But "can this be?" It's one thing to say everyone should have X. It's another thing entirely to show that it's currently plausible on a large, long-term scale.
This is seriously the worst "counterexample" I have ever heard against health care ever. First, for all the reasons Dex said. The woman is clearly a rarity. Most people don't want a thing to do with the doctor most of the time if they can avoid it. Going to the doctors is a hassle.
Except when you get sick and have to. That's when someone's life could be on the line, and yeah, I'd say there're a lot of good reasons why ethically it is a must to save that person.
Plus I heard a story like this just a while back on some elitist liberal news media show, and the fact is in countries where people can get away with doing this, it's not a problem for the people working, because since the person doesn't have any real problems, no real work has to be done to help that person. They just let them walk around and make conversation.
You say my example is the worst, and then spool out the rest of your post where you presume patients just "hang around and make conversation?" Huzzuh??
News Flash - people already get health care when their life is on the line. Barring some bizarre snafu between police and EMTs (it's happened recently), people aren't denied care at a hospital. Now THAT is a ridiculous argument.
Mine isn't ridiculous at all - it's a real situation that causes multiple medical personal hours and hours of their time and attention each week. These are actual people in an actual situation my GF is directly involved in. She complains about it BECAUSE IT'S A PROBLEM.
Say, I live in Massachusetts, a state that has already implemented some health care systems in, and we have widespread abuse of the medical system happening....let's see here...
1+1 = ....
But hey - forget all my dumb ass jokes about doctors... I ask again...Please explain how a right works when another person that is not yourself has to provide a service or task that is critical in that right being recognized properly.
planet news
06-14-11, 03:03 PM
... same exact points, different thread... what's the point?
I'll try something different.
Yoda, what would you need to be true for universal healthcare to be a justified policy?
Sedai, what would you need to be true for universal healthcare to be a right?
These are crucial questions, because the truths yall need are the truths Dex and I already "have".
We all live in the same world, so what the hell is the problem? Maybe because all this back and forth doesn't ever confront the issue.
In a tennis match, neither player ever touch. They are always separated at least by the net. Therefore it is always a competition to see who gathers the most points per volley.
Excuse me if that seems to be a waste of time...
Yeah, I think that gets forgotten. People talk rhetorically about health care as if, without universal health care, everyone's just screwed all the time. But hospitals are required to treat patients who just come in hurt. We're not allowed to just ignore bleeding people even as-is.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 03:04 PM
Edit: i coulda swore i hit the quote button.
originally posted by Yoda
No, I mean, our sponsorship or endorsement of it. What they do after rebuilding is up to them. Obviously we don't think it's awesome permanently, or else we'd have done it ourselves.
But in that same vein, how many European countries enjoy universal healthcare and don't find themselves either going broke or having to dramatically reform the system for fear of going broke? It seems to happen to almost all of them.
Well America is going broke..largely as a result of Pentagon spending run amok.
i guess if one must choose a money pit, i guess we (every industrialized democratic country cept usa) choose healthcare for the populace over blowen up brown people really good.
pick a poison.
Again, for the record, this came up in response to a Rufnek post. I am talking about the Country in which i live, work, and pay way more taxes i suspect than yourselves.
And knowing where the lionshare of it goes, im ok with it.
I wouldn't be if tomorrow healthcare was scrapped however. If anything, our system is weak comparitively to most commenwealth countries due to the vastness of our Country.
will.15
06-14-11, 03:04 PM
"The deficit started" is a weird phrase. You make it sound like a ball rolling down a hill, rather than a series of decisions. It doesn't matter if he "started it," what matters is that we keep adding to it so that it's now several times the size it was when people were tearing into Bush for it.
Of couse it matters. He started it and much of what Obama did was an extension of Bush's initiative, and a ball rolling down the hill is quite appropriate to describe the process, once you make one decision, other similar ones follow.
Also, the idea that the bank bailouts were necessary to avoid 20% unemployment is unmitigated nonsense. It's part of Obama's convenient "jobs created or saved" (emphasis mine) pseudo-statistic. It's a handy phrase, because it isn't based in anything observable or empirical. No matter how bad things are (and they're way, WAY worse than the Obama administration promised us they would be if only they got their stimulus), they can always say it would have been worse.
Oops, did it again, rebuttal below:
Under the Great Depression, and the bank crisis was at that level, unemployment was at its peak almost twenty-five percent. What we have now is a recession with unemployment rates comparable to the late seventies and early eighties. Yes, it would have been far worse wthout the bailouts.
It is not a success story for several reasons which I've detailed in another thread. To summarize: an interest-free loan is not a good investment, the bar must be insanely low if merely getting our money back is considered awesome, and it doesn't factor in the very basic economic idea of opportunity cost. I'll add something to that list, too: it shortchanged the people the automakers were in debt to. Many of them were not paid, despite having legitimate claims on the debt. You know who made out, instead? The autoworkers union. They now own more of the company than they did before. This is a blatant political favoritism and terrible economics.
I don't see how it is not a success story, we still have three automalers instead of just one. Chrysler for sure would have been liquidated and probably General Motors as well if not for government intervention. The folks the automakers were in debt to would have not have been fully reimbursed if the companies declared bankruptcy. The autoworkers union members are autoworkers and I think it is a good thing they own more of the company. They got it by making major concessions in their employment agreement and more company and union cooperation is a good thing. The results show that. It is a succes not just because the government gets most, no, not all of its money back, but because a thriving auto industry is important to the American economy. Chrysler was expendable, but General Motors?
We don't live in the same Country. You don't pay for squat.
We live in a Society Mike. not a private island where you command all that you survey.
I just have no idea what you are talking about.
I pay hundreds per month for my own health care AND my taxes pay for health care for the people in my state that get it for FREE. They go to the doctor, claim they have no money, get free care, and I PAY FOR IT. To them, it;s free. Please explain where in that chain they buck up some cash. Thanks.
Private Island? No clue what you are on about here - no clue. That's probably one of the most irrelevant things you could have said, as it has absolutely no bearing on anything we are talking about.
I ASK AGAIN - how does an inalienable right work that requires other people to provide a service to me. I'm an artist, not a politician I need help with this one.
... same exact points, different thread... what's the point?
The point of having different topics in different threads? Surely this is obvious. Coherency. The ability to discuss one subject and not have to read or discuss another.
Yoda, what would you need to be true for universal healthcare to be a justified policy?
I like this question very much. Part of it I'll probably always oppose, because it carries with it the assumption (at least, given the rhetoric used to defend it) that we are inherently responsible for something that I think defies government control.
That said, it is entirely possible that medical technology will progress to the point at which basic health care will not be cost prohibitive, and will become universal simply because that cost is no longer a crippling impediment to the rest of government and society. In those instances I probably wouldn't support the underlying ideology, but if this ever happens the idea of universal health care probably becomes inevitable.
It is also possible, of course, that even as basic health care becomes cheap, newer, more advanced procedures remain expensive, and people use the idea of universal health care to argue that those should be available to all, too. Which guarantees that, once you posit the RIGHT to health care, it will always be either significantly limited or rationed, or else prohibitively expensive, because one cannot reconcile the idea that a RIGHT to health care not include every single thing that health care makes possible.
planet news
06-14-11, 03:11 PM
You say my example is the worst, and then spool out the rest of your post where you presume patients just "hang around and make conversation?" Huzzuh?? HUZZZAAAAHHH???
Nice argument there. I see what you mean.
News Flash - people already get health care when their life is on the line. Barring some bizarre snafu between police and EMTs (it's happened recently), people aren't denied care at a hospital. Now THAT is a ridiculous argument.Yeah they are. Prohibitive costs. I don't even go to book stores anymore, because I'm not going to buy books there. I'd rather get them free at the library. Imperfect example, but you act like costs don't discourage people deciding to get certain kinds of care.
Mine isn't ridiculous at all - it's a real situation that causes multiple medical personal hours and hours of their time and attention each week. These are actual people in an actual situation my GF is directly involved in. She complains about it BECAUSE IT'S A PROBLEM. It's a single case, and it's unlike the majority of people. That's why it's ridiculous.
I met a left handed person yesterday. I guess all people in the world are left handed. That's what you're saying.
Say, I live in Massachusetts, a state that has already implemented some health care systems in, and we have widespread abuse of the medical system happening....let's see here...
1+1 = ....Again. Very nice argument. I am so glad I understand now.
But hey - forget all my dumb ass jokes about doctors... I ask again...Please explain how a right works when another person that is not yourself has to provide a service or task that is critical in that right being recognized properly.
I don't need to explain your narrow conception of a "right" that you just made up on the spot. Justify first why that should be the definition of a right. I certainly don't think it is the definition of a "right" at all.
You proposed the definition. You justify it.
Rights are horrible ways of talking about thinks that people ought to have or be able to do.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 03:11 PM
Jesus would favour healthcare over the War Machine i'd have to think.
planet news
06-14-11, 03:12 PM
The point of having different topics in different threads? No. The fact the every single thread on health care you might as well copy and paste the same exact back and forth, because no one wants to concede anything ever.
I am talking literally the same stuff over and over and over and over. I heard this stuff just the other day in the Obama thread. It's just stuff that people thought up one day, put into a list and then copy and paste whenever they "discuss" anything.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 03:16 PM
I just have no idea what you are talking about.
I pay hundreds per month for my own health care AND my taxes pay for health care for the people in my state that get it for FREE. They go to the doctor, claim they have no money, get free care, and I PAY FOR IT. To them, it;s free. Please explain where in that chain they buck up some cash. Thanks.
Private Island? No clue what you are on about here - no clue. That's probably one of the most irrelevant things you could have said, as it has absolutely no bearing on anything we are talking about.
I ASK AGAIN - how does an inalienable right work that requires other people to provide a service to me. I'm an artist, not a politician I need help with this one.
Mike im not American.
I thought you knew that.
my bad.
Jesus would favour healthcare over the War Machine i'd have to think.
Seems like it would depend on the specifics. What if it's free health care vouchers versus WW2? We can't generalize about these things. And I don't love the idea of anyone pretending they can know Jesus' mind unless it's based on something He specifically said.
Trotting Jesus out to support social programs, however, is an old saw, and not a very sharp one. Jesus' teachings were entirely contingent on the fact that the people who followed them did so voluntarily. Charity is consistent with it. State coercion is not. For every parable about forsaking wealth (again, voluntarily), there's one about financial prudence and the like. Heck, there's even the Parable of the Talents, which is about sound investing. There is nothing inconsistent about Christianity and free markets, just with Christianity and being a stingy miser who doesn't give a crap about anyone else.
In other words, Christianty goes fine with Freidrich Hayek. Just not so well with Ayn Rand (who was, not coincidentally, a virulent atheist).
No. The fact the every single thread on health care you might as well copy and paste the same exact back and forth, because no one wants to concede anything ever.
Well, yeah, but lots of political discussions devolve into the use of talking points. The best we can do is dig beneath those and find the actual dispute.
Your question was a good one for that reason. Another good one is: if health care is a right, what do we do when the cost threatens to devour the budget?
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 03:21 PM
Are you suggesting in your opinion Yoda, Jesus would rather the goofy over-spending be used on the War Machine than Healthcare for the populace?
Cmon man, now thats just silly talk.
especially when the military operates as "free healthcare"
well not free exactly, Sedai is funding it.
Are you suggesting in your opinion Yoda, Jesus would rather the goofy over-spending be used on the War Machine than Healthcare for the populace?
Cmon man, now thats just silly talk.
Well, Dex, it's always silly talk when you construct a rhetorical question that does not resemble what someone said and then ask them if they believe it. ;)
What I said was that it depends. And that charity is not charity when it is coerced. You started with an extremely broad statement that only compared "healthcare" and the "War Machine." In this quote, you've added the phrase "goofy over-spending." The goalposts are already shifting.
My stance is the same: Jesus' teachings were contingent on being voluntary, not coercive. Whether or not He would support a specific war probably depends on the specifics of that war.
And, being God and all, I don't think He'd recommend any program that would consume an ever-increasing amount of the budget, no matter how noble it might seem on the surface, since that only delays suffering.
No Nazi's yet, though - F you Godwin's Law! ;)
Planet - You have a very solid point about cost being prohibitive - that's a whole different issue, one of drug company and insurance systems gone out of control - I have a feeling I would agree with you a lot more if we discussed those concepts. :)
As for the right to healthcare - How is it me that defined the right? Someone else brought it up. Isn't the right to healthcare the right to get healthcare?? I can't provide that for myself. Can you? Doesn't that mean someone else has to be involved? Sorry, I haven't had to explain this point before - it seems rather obvious to me and anyone else that has discussed this with me. *Shrugs* How does a govenment insure every single person gets provided with services provided by other citizens...private citizens?
I'm not being sarcastic here - I don't know this stuff.
Dex, I knew you were from Canada bro! I was talking about what I have to pay for. :)
planet news
06-14-11, 03:30 PM
:facepalm:
This whole thread...
I'm just so overwhelmed with the discrepancies in realities between both sides.
Same with the abortion thread.
And what's worse no one wants to overcome them by asking new questions.
Yoda, you basically said that there is nothing that we could say that could ever make you think universal health care is a justifiable position. Even if healthcare technology advanced to the point where it is on the level of, say, public transportation today. You still don't accept it.
So what can anyone say?
There is nothing I could say. If I were God, and I brought about that health care utopia for you, you still wouldn't support it. So what could I say now?
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 03:33 PM
my point is both our countries have humongous programs that incur large costs.
In the States its for the Military buildup and the implementation abroad.
In Canada, its Healthcare. Cept we don't borrow hundereds of millions of dollars each month from Commie Countries.
Knowing all you know about Jesus and the kind of man he was, and how he chose to live his life, If he lived today, would he favour the American Christian way of life or the Canadian way of life?
in your opinion.
planet news
06-14-11, 03:34 PM
I don't know about state socialism, but Christianity and communism are exactly the same philosophy. I mean this in a completely literal non-metaphorical way.
They are literally related on a one-to-one basis if you switch out the same words for the same words.
They are the same thing. Period.
My stance is the same: Jesus' teachings were contingent on being voluntary, not coercive..... same exact points... different thread....
Maybe instead we should look to where in the Bible this is said so that we may discover ambiguities in the interpretations?
Coercive... what is this? On what level? Is this coercive on the level of someone grabbing your arms and forcing you to hit yourself on the head? Or is it coercive in that police are coercive against people murdering other people? In other words, it's to stop someone from doing something they SHOULD DO?
Why isn't this ambiguity a part of our discussion? Why is it just that one talking point and that's it. Bam.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 03:37 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzRf11Kd5uE
Ugg, just lost a big post. I'll pop back on later.
:facepalm:
This whole thread...
I'm just so overwhelmed with the discrepancies in realities between both sides.
Same with the abortion thread.
And what's worse no one wants to overcome them by asking new questions.
Yoda, you basically said that there is nothing that we could say that could ever make you think universal health care is a justifiable position. Even if healthcare technology advanced to the point where it is on the level of, say, public transportation today. You still don't accept it.
So what can anyone say?
There is nothing I could say. If I were God, and I brought about that health care utopia for you, you still wouldn't support it. So what could I say now?
Well, you can explain which (if any) of the reasons I gave for my opposition are wrong. My reasons are: the cost is prohibitive, and the very nature of defining it as a "right" means that even increased technology provides only a temporary reprieve, as this "right" will always be used to assert that all have some kind of access to even the newest and most expensive treatments.
So, there are only a few possibilities here. Either you disagree with one of those statements (in which case you can explain why), or else you can say that it's all true and you just don't care (in which case you can explain to me what happens when the costs make universal access prohibitive). Simple.
Isn't asking how we deal with prohibitive costs a "new question"? It sure isn't "It's a right"/"No it isn't."
my point is both our countries have humongous programs that incur large costs.
In the States its for the Military buildup and the implementation abroad.
In Canada, its Healthcare. Cept we don't borrow hundereds of millions of dollars each month from Commie Countries.
Knowing all you know about Jesus and the kind of man he was, and how he chose to live his life, If he lived today, would he favour the American Christian way of life or the Canadian way of life?
in your opinion.
I'm sure He'd have a better idea than either, but I think he'd favor the more voluntary, independent lean of the American system, because of His emphasis on voluntary giving. Of course, he'd also tell us we're not giving anywhere near enough to charity.
But, again, I fundamentally reject the inclusion of speculation about Jesus to begin with. You're asking me to guess a part of the mind of God that He hasn't imparted to us. I don't feel even remotely qualified to answer unless pressed to, and I don't really think tossing Jesus around in these debates serves anything.
I don't know about state socialism, but Christianity and communism are exactly the same philosophy. I mean this in a completely literal non-metaphorical way.
You say this from time to time, and my answer is always the same: Christianity is voluntary. Basically no capitalist is against someone giving away money for the common good. They're against being MADE to do it. Just as we're not against someone choosing to be silent, but we ARE against the government silencing them.
Coercive... what is this? On what level? Is this coercive on the level of someone grabbing your arms and forcing you to hit yourself on the head? Or is it coercive in that police are coercive against people murdering other people? In other words, it's to stop someone from doing something they SHOULD DO?
They're all coercive. If there's something the government puts you in jail for doing, they are coercing you. Taxes are coercive because you go to jail if you don't pay them. Social programs are not charity, because they are not freely given.
This is something that just gets left out of discussions of government policy: the fact that every dollar used for any program is taken, by definition.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 04:08 PM
ok im confused. Jesus was the Son of god. he isn't god.
Jesus was a man
whatever, i must be wrong. I haven't read the book in years, and surely you would know Yodes.
:D
Yeah, at that point you get into the Trinity, and the idea that they are one, but distinct. Independent but in agreement would probably be one way to think of it, though I risk stepping on some theologian's toes, because obviously a tremendous amount of time and study has gone into the exact nature of the relationship, so don't quote me.
Either way, it's probably sufficient to think of Him as way, way smarter than us. :D
I wrote up a response to your last post, Will, and I thought I'd saved it in my Dropbox folder before driving home, but apparently not. So I'll just post it tomorrow, then, when I get back.
will.15
06-14-11, 04:51 PM
When Jesus returns, I am sure he will let us mortals know what he thinks of socialized medicine and the military industrial complex.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 04:53 PM
Yeah, at that point you get into the Trinity, and the idea that they are one, but distinct.
thats a trippy concept. its amazen holy roller types tend to frown on hallucigens.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 04:56 PM
Defense budget, no matter how large it is, does not contribute to the defecit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbSAUh-dD_4
I believe it stems from the translations of The Bible in which the pronouns (or something similar) imply multiple people when God is talking. Whatever God is, though, I have little doubt it would seem kinda trippy to us.
Brodinski
06-14-11, 05:08 PM
But in that same vein, how many European countries enjoy universal healthcare and don't find themselves either going broke or having to dramatically reform the system for fear of going broke? It seems to happen to almost all of them.
Your whole reasoning is plain wrong. You make it sound like Europe's universal health care is THE problem that countries are going broke. It isn't. It's the Euro and the fact that our National Banks can't just print money like yours can.
I'll take Greece as an example. That country is broke, because the government misses out on huge incomes due to massive tax evasion. They let this go on for decades whereas the politicians should've handled this problem through reforms and a more stringent implementation of their tax system.
Moreover, the Greek government didn't invest enough in the hen with the golden egg: tourism. They should've promoted their country way, way more.
I could quote many more reasons why the country is now broke, but it all boils down to their governments not being strict enough in their policies and giving the Greek population too much freedom, which led to them abusing the system.
And now they are flat-out broke. But NOT because of the health care system. In all likelihood, that'll be thoroughly abused in Greece, much like everything, but the system isn't the cause. The cause is the fact that the country has been badly run for decades and now, the ***** has finally caught the fan.
Your whole reasoning is plain wrong. You make it sound like Europe's universal health care is THE problem that countries are going broke. It isn't. It's the Euro and the fact that our National Banks can't just print money like yours can.
Don't even get me started on us trying to print our way out of current troubles. I won't be defending that, so don't worry. It's a terrible idea that's temporarily propping up an economy even worse than the already poor numbers indicate.
But to your point: I'm not suggesting that all European countries that are going broke are doing so because of health care. There are a variety of entitlements out there, each of them capable of doing the same sort of thing. But let's skip over this for a moment and and narrow the original question: which European countries that have universal healthcare have not seen it eat up and ever-increasing amount of their budget, and/or had to significantly reform it? The UK is constantly talking about reform. Australia isn't European but it, too, has universal healthcare, and needs to reform. It's being discussed in Canada as well, and I suspect the places that resist it will find the need overwhelming before long. Why?
I'll take Greece as an example. That country is broke, because the government misses out on huge incomes due to massive tax evasion. They let this go on for decades whereas the politicians should've handled this problem through reforms and a more stringent implementation of their tax system.
You don't think it has something to do with their generous public pensions and the fact that they granted a seventh of their work force early retirements? Entitlements are almost invariably a part of all such major financial crisis, because of their very nature. They are ongoing, increasing costs which mean prospects get worse as time goes on. Things like tax loopholes can be closed and sometimes even fixed overnight, at least in a general sense. It is the ongoing, exponential costs that cripple budgets in the long run. That's when debt becomes impossible to manage: when there is no prospect for recovery.
It's also not an either-or scenario. I have no trouble believing that Greece has been badly mismanaged in a variety of ways. But expanding entitlements narrow the options a country has when that sort of mismanagement occurs. The more you've obligated yourself to pay out, the less flexibility and margin you have as a result of other forms of incompetence.
Put another way: the things you're describing are reasons this is happening as soon and as badly as it is, but I don't think they're reasons it's happening at all, if you follow the distinction.
Brodinski
06-14-11, 05:36 PM
But to your point: I'm not suggesting that all European countries that are going broke are doing so because of health care. There are a variety of entitlements out there, each of them capable of doing the same sort of thing. But let's skip over this for a moment and and narrow the original question: which European countries that have universal healthcare have not seen it eat up and ever-increasing amount of their budget, and/or had to significantly reform it? The UK is constantly talking about reform. Australia isn't European but it, too, has universal healthcare, and needs to reform. It's being discussed in Canada as well, and I suspect the places that resist it will find the need overwhelming before long. Why?
Increasing life expectancy of the population. People get olderand older, man. This is of course thanks to technological developments in taking care of the sick and elder (just using a collective term here), which now enable us to keep people alive longer. The consequence is naturally rising expenses. Yes, this will need fixing. It will eventually be simple. Europeans will need to work longer and get lesser pensions. Every government will do everything to avoid that scenario, but they will all have to succumb to it eventually, unless they want to end up like Greece.
I don't think it's because people are abusing the system.
You don't think it has something to do with their generous public pensions and the fact that they granted a seventh of their work force early retirements? Entitlements are almost invariably a part of all such major financial crisis, because of their very nature. They are ongoing, increasing costs which mean prospects get worse as time goes on. Things like tax loopholes can be closed and sometimes even fixed overnight, at least in a general sense. It is the ongoing, exponential costs that cripple budgets in the long run. That's when debt becomes impossible to manage: when there is no prospect for recovery.
Absolutely. But public pensions are generous in a lot of places in Europe. Also the early retirements. It has to be said though that the latter is due to complete mismanagement of the country and simply appeasing the population in order to stay in power rather than doing the sensible thing.
And no, their tax loopholes cannot be fixed easily. Tax evasion permeates every business sector in Greece and not just to a small extent. The biggest problems are mismanagement of the country and the fact that they had to expend lots and lots of money to fight the crisis and keep their banks alive, when they really couldn't afford it.
will.15
06-14-11, 05:51 PM
Increasing life expectancy of the population. People get olderand older, man. This is of course thanks to technological developments in taking care of the sick and elder (just using a collective term here), which now enable us to keep people alive longer. The consequence is naturally rising expenses. Yes, this will need fixing. It will eventually be simple. Europeans will need to work longer and get lesser pensions. Every government will do everything to avoid that scenario, but they will all have to succumb to it eventually, unless they want to end up like Greece.
I don't think it's because people are abusing the system.
Absolutely. But public pensions are generous in a lot of places in Europe. Also the early retirements. It has to be said though that the latter is due to complete mismanagement of the country and simply appeasing the population in order to stay in power rather than doing the sensible thing.
And no, their tax loopholes cannot be fixed easily. Tax evasion permeates every business sector in Greece and not just to a small extent. The biggest problems are mismanagement of the country and the fact that they had to expend lots and lots of money to fight the crisis and keep their banks alive, when they really couldn't afford it.
Yoda doesn't think government should have bailed out the banks. No government, no matter what type of government was in charge at the time, was willing to let the banks fail on a massive scale.
Increasing life expectancy of the population. People get olderand older, man. This is of course thanks to technological developments in taking care of the sick and elder (just using a collective term here), which now enable us to keep people alive longer. The consequence is naturally rising expenses. Yes, this will need fixing. It will eventually be simple. Europeans will need to work longer and get lesser pensions. Every government will do everything to avoid that scenario, but they will all have to succumb to it eventually, unless they want to end up like Greece.
I don't think it's because people are abusing the system.
Oh, I wasn't suggesting that it was about people abusing the system at all. I'm saying that this is simply what entitlement programs naturally do, even without abuse: they grow and grow, for the reasons you state and others. As conceived they are completely unsustainable. Various things in the United States, such as our overall wealth and ability to print money and dilute its value, masks this fact. But in other economies like Greece, we see what it leads to.
And when other forms of mismanagement occur (or even without them, eventually), entitlements need to be heavily reformed. And, shockingly, we find that people feel entitled to their entitlements. ;) That's why they're so financially destructive: a combination of utter insolvency with a moral component that causes the citizenry to resist their reform.
Absolutely. But public pensions are generous in a lot of places in Europe. Also the early retirements. It has to be said though that the latter is due to complete mismanagement of the country and simply appeasing the population in order to stay in power rather than doing the sensible thing.
Agreed. We need leaders who will tell us the hard truth about what is and is not financially feasible. I'm not sure people want to hear it, but they ignore it at their own peril.
And no, their tax loopholes cannot be fixed easily. Tax evasion permeates every business sector in Greece and not just to a small extent. The biggest problems are mismanagement of the country and the fact that they had to expend lots and lots of money to fight the crisis and keep their banks alive, when they really couldn't afford it.
I may have been clumsy in my phrasing: when I said "closed and fixed overnight," I meant that its effects would be immediately evident, not that the legislation would be necessarily easy to pass. By way of analogy, the country's finances are a boat with too many people getting on board and a leak. If you fix the leak and dump the excess water out, the boat is instantly more bouyant. But every person that comes in stays in. Stop tax evasion and you get new taxes coming in. Stop entitlement growth and you still haven't seen the last of the problem, because even the current retirees keep drawing more and more.
planet news
06-14-11, 06:20 PM
In other words, another restatement of your same points.
1) When entitlements are given, people want more. Which sounds a lot like this: "if you give someone minimum wage, they want maximum wage", which is stupid and untrue. We give someone minimum wages so they don't wander the streets without a place to sleep. Anything more, and we would be overstepping our bounds. It's classic slippery slope what you're doing.
2) It's not financially feasible. It's impossible without going into tons of debt. Hmmmmm.... this seems like something that I could contradict with a little bit of research. I'll get back to you here.
3) As for Jesus saying stuff is voluntary..... whatever man. WHATEVER.
The distinction between voluntary/non-voluntary is probably the biggest linguistic hole anyone can fall into, and I know this from my endlessly wise life experience. *puff* *puff* *puff on my pipe*
Because you can attribute any number of causes as "forcing" you to do something. For example, you can attribute the police for "forcing" you do not commit murder, but there is also the possibility that you just didn't want to commit murder. It only stops the people who do, because people shouldn't be murdered.
Are you saying Jesus would not agree that people shouldn't be murdered (for bad reasons of course, obviously he wanted to murder a lot of people)?
Clearly there are ethical injunctions that exist, and this should be the nature of "coercion". Is it RIGHT or WRONG to do something? And if it is WRONG to do something it is ALSO WRONG to let somebody else do it.
4) Also, i'm not going to waste my time arguing for the merits of a state socialist straw man. I'm not into that. But I will gladly explain why communism is not "coercive" at all.
People simply want to help others, because there is so strong a feeling of communal love, love for all people because of their existence as people and people alone. The love of the community IS the love of the holy ghost. No one is "coerced", because they just want to.
Now this is obvious when extended to state socialism. Has Christianity made you hate mankind so much that you cannot believe that people will simply WANT to help others as part of a love of others?
People join the military for three main reasons: 1) it's their only option because they can't find other lines of work, 2) they are drafted or "coerced" on penalty, 3) because they want to, because they want to help protect their country.
Any other reason is partially suicidal (which is not a bad thing at all)!
#3 is the level that communism exists at. We all love one another and will help one another. The selflessness and unconditional love that defines the divine love.
But please, try again to insert individuality and self-interest into LOVE.
I had other stuff, but the database error was too long, so I gave up and did something else. Screw it.
1) When entitlements are given, people want more. Which sounds a lot like this: "if you give someone minimum wage, they want maximum wage", which is stupid and untrue. We give someone minimum wages so they don't wander the streets without a place to sleep. Anything more, and we would be overstepping our bounds. It's classic slippery slope what you're doing.
No, there is a logical disconnect between "these programs always grow" and your example of "maximum wage." I don't know what "maximum wage" even means, but the correct analogy would be "if you give someone minimum wage, they'll want the minimum wage raised." Which is exactly what keeps happening to the minimum wage. It goes up now and then, and never goes down. Even when we have deflation.
The idea behind entitlements is simply that you're entitled to them. It expands, never contracts, unless/until a massive crisis results from their expansion. Ever hear the phrase "what's mine is mine and what's your is negotiable"?
2) It's not financially feasible. It's impossible without going into tons of debt. Hmmmmm.... this seems like something that I could contradict with a little bit of research. I'll get back to you here.
Okay then.
3) As for Jesus saying stuff is voluntary..... whatever man. WHATEVER.
The distinction between voluntary/non-voluntary is probably the biggest linguistic hole anyone can fall into, and I know this from my endlessly wise life experience. *puff* *puff* *puff on my pipe*
The thought of you smoking a pipe is hysterical. Moreso if I imagine bubbles coming out of it.
Because you can attribute any number of causes as "forcing" you to do something. For example, you can attribute the police for "forcing" you do not commit murder, but there is also the possibility that you just didn't want to commit murder. It only stops the people who do, because people shouldn't be murdered.
For this to be true there would have to never be an instance where the threat of legal reprisal stopped someone from committing murder. And I think it's clear that this happens at least some of the time. It brings to mind the quote that we "punish more severely in order to punish less frequently." A good law does not only punish people who have done things, but deters others from doing it to start with. Thus, someone who doesn't commit murder because they fear punishment is also being "coerced" into not doing it. They are being coerced by threat.
But I'm not sure there's much legal value in the distinction between coercing someone not to do something and simply not allowing something they wouldn't do, anyway. The choice is the point, no? A person who has no freedom of speech doesn't stop being oppressed on a day when they don't have anything to say. They're oppressed by the mere fact that they cannot.
Regardless, isn't this academic? There is no society that will completely unite behind something like this. At least some people will not want to pay for other people's health care, and a universal health care law will necessarily coerce them to do so anyway.
Are you saying Jesus would not agree that people shouldn't be murdered (for bad reasons of course, obviously he wanted to murder a lot of people)?
Clearly there are ethical injunctions that exist, and this should be the nature of "coercion". Is it RIGHT or WRONG to do something? And if it is WRONG to do something it is ALSO WRONG to let somebody else do it.
I don't understand the first sentence/question. Regarding the rest: yes, ethical injunctions exist. Some things will be coerced. I have no problem with people making the case that paying for health care as a group is one of these things. I'm only disputing the notion that it is not, in fact, coerced.
4) Also, i'm not going to waste my time arguing for the merits of a state socialist straw man. I'm not into that. But I will gladly explain why communism is not "coercive" at all.
People simply want to help others, because there is so strong a feeling of communal love, love for all people because of their existence as people and people alone. The love of the community IS the love of the holy ghost. No one is "coerced", because they just want to.
And what happens if they decide they don't want to?
Now this is obvious when extended to state socialism. Has Christianity made you hate mankind so much that you cannot believe that people will simply WANT to help others as part of a love of others?
I don't even fully understand why this question is wrong, nor what statement of it mine it stems from. But I'll just state my position on people in general: sometimes we will help each other out of love. Many times we will not. We're fallen, imperfect, and ultimately pretty selfish. But yes, we are capable of beautiful, selfless things. It's just not something you can rely on.
People join the military for three main reasons: 1) it's their only option because they can't find other lines of work, 2) they are drafted or "coerced" on penalty, 3) because they want to, because they want to help protect their country.
Any other reason is partially suicidal (which is not a bad thing at all)!
#3 is the level that communism exists at. We all love one another and will help one another. The selflessness and unconditional love that defines the divine love.
But please, try again to insert individuality and self-interest into LOVE.
Perfect love dispenses with individuality and self-interest. But our love is not perfect, because we're not perfect. And even then, this is thinking of familial love, which is not easily transferred to just anyone else. If we could all love each other in the same way that we love our spouses or our children, perhaps Communism could work. But I don't think we can.
Regarding the army example: do you think we'd have the same size army if we didn't pay them anything other than their expenses?
You might have to branch this thread off again into something similar to "Who Was Jesus and Was He a Commie?" I'd be down for that thread, but otherwise, I'm leaving this alone for now.
It'd really be something if we had to create a new thread for the discussion in the new thread we just had to create.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 07:12 PM
its a confusing thread if you didn't see the original branch-off in the abortion thread.
The goverment isn't contradicting itself; it's merely providing the public a choice. There is no contradition in say "pick whichever you want."
However, the government does indicate a preference when it underwrites some or all of the cost of A but provides none of the cost for ~A
No. Where is it written that anyone--much less everyone--has a right to health care? It says we're entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It doesn't guarantee happiness nor does it guarantee a long life free of illness. Now if you get sick or injured and can afford treatment, then you can buy the medical care and knowledge that will extend your life. But there is no guarantee the state will pay for your medical care if you can't afford it. Nor should there be.
US residents think we're entitled to lots of things like medical care, cheap energy, a balanced diet, our own house, a car in every garage simply because we were born into a time where we were lucky enough that such things were available. But these things have never been guaranteed in the past or present, and we're reaching the point where we're about to price ourselves out of the market for these and other supplemental items.
Its this sorta thinking that makes me oh so happy i was lucky enough to be born in a Country at time where Healthcare for all is indeed considered a right.
Its odd to me it isn't so Stateside. After all the first settlers were largely commen men with no birthright to royalty for special treatment.
Cancer hits commen men and wealthy men alike, what makes wealthy men's lives worth saving moreso than the vast majority of the population is utterly baffling to me.
Nobody says it's more worth saving. Rich people can afford better lawyers, too, but the fact that that's possible doesn't mean both our countries think they deserve more justice, does it? What you're saying is not an argument for universal healthcare, it's an argument against basic capitalism, or the idea that anyone can have something better than another person.
The phrasing is backwards: nobody gets together and decides that rich people are worth saving. There's no meeting.
Hey Chris, do you really think the average 40 somethen American has any more "Stuff" than i do?
house- check
2 cars in the garage- check
vacation each year- check
cottage property- check
money in the bank- check
money saved for retirement ( RRSP's)- Check
What problem do you think i have with basic Capitalism again?
I believe Healthcare is a right for all in the same way the fire Dept sends trucks put out fires in the Ritzy neighborhoods and shatty ones alike.
Its kinda funny that human life is considered so sacred whilst in the belly of a woman, yet once outside its disposable apparently based on the $$ of the household it was born into.
I just can't wrap my brain round the paradox of that concept.
that doesn't bug you just a wee tad?
This just doesn't follow from what I said, but I've got enough lines of argumentation going and this is branching off from the topic of abortion. If you want to discuss this, please copy and paste your last post into one of the healthcare threads and I'll gladly respond. But we've already been hijacked by monkeys; we don't need to be hijacked by healthcare, too.
Yeah, sorry, I picked a less than great cutoff point in part because I wanted to branch it off before more posts showed up. Thanks for posting those, Dex, for posterity and clarity and all that.
planet news
06-14-11, 07:49 PM
WARNING: RANTING HARD
No, there is a logical disconnect between "these programs always grow" and your example of "maximum wage." I don't know what "maximum wage" even means, but the correct analogy would be "if you give someone minimum wage, they'll want the minimum wage raised." Which is exactly what keeps happening to the minimum wage. It goes up now and then, and never goes down. Even when we have deflation.And why must we keep raising the minimum wage? Why is this a must? Why does this happen?
Let's assume that there is a situation where minimum wage can go up "naturally" -- let's say when the economy is good -- and it only benefits people. This situation is not unimaginable.
Now let's look at the opposite situation where minimum wage goes up "unnaturally" and it only hurts everyone overall.
I asked you this same question in a PM, but why can't the government just be smart about this? I agree that they haven't been smart, but why can't the government just change its ways and, well, BE SMARTER? I'm nearly finished with Hazlitt's book now, and I'm still asking the same thing. Why can't the government just make the right calculation ahead of time? Natural pricing works, but it works slowly and often unfairly. Why can't the government fix these problems AND be smart about it?
I don't see the mutual exclusivity here.
Okay then.YEAH. YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT. YOU BETTER WATCH OUT, BOWYER. IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZER.
For this to be true there would have to never be an instance where the threat of legal reprisal stopped someone from committing murder.I'm not saying something is true or false. I'm merely pointing out the ambiguity of the word "coercion" and how complex it is. This doesn't involve a "never/always" type of ultimatum. It is an ambiguity because it embraces both alternative.
People are both coerced and un-coerced. That's the only point I'm making here.
But I'm not sure there's much legal value in the distinction between coercing someone not to do something and simply not allowing something they wouldn't do, anyway. The choice is the point, no? A person who has no freedom of speech doesn't stop being oppressed on a day when they don't have anything to say. They're oppressed by the mere fact that they cannot.Ah, but speech is a terrible, terrible example here, because one can say an infinite amount of things.
There are also ethical injunctions on speech. Ethical injunctions, when assumed, change the entire game. Not only are there now coerced and un-coerced actions, there are also ethical and unethical actions. Unethical actions should not be allowed to occur.
Regardless, isn't this academic?So be it.
But ethics trumps coercion, and that is certainly not academic.
I don't understand the first sentence/question."Are you saying Jesus would not agree that people shouldn't be murdered?" a.k.a. what I asked.
Regarding the rest: yes, ethical injunctions exist. Some things will be coerced. I have no problem with people making the case that paying for health care as a group is one of these things. I'm only disputing the notion that it is not, in fact, coerced.I never said it wasn't coerced, did I? I just said that there is a possibility that it isn't coerced.
Why is this whole discussion of coercion/ethics extremely relevant? Because once ethical injunctions are assumed, coercion becomes necessary. It becomes indistinguishable from pure ethical necessity. It is subsumed in the entity of ethics, which you believe exists. That's the whole idea behind the law; it is necessary. Why is it necessary? Often for pragmatic reasons, often for economics reasons, but always for ethical reasons. The law can never be "consciously" unethical. Ethics is precisely what gives the law its mandate.
And what happens if they decide they don't want to?The whole point is they wouldn't decide that. They wouldn't want to. I would be destructive to decide against it for both themselves and the community. They would simply ask themselves the question: should I be a hUgE ******* today? Nah. Being a HuGe ******* kinda sucks.
Once we assume ethical injunctions exist, the idea that somebody should have the freedom to act evil is rendered impotent, even though it's stupid already by common sense.
Your argument: "we should have the right to be evil!"
I don't even fully understand why this question is wrong, nor what statement of it mine it stems from. But I'll just state my position on people in general: sometimes we will help each other out of love. Many times we will not. We're fallen, imperfect, and ultimately pretty selfish. But yes, we are capable of beautiful, selfless things. It's just not something you can rely on.This is why I like to say that Christianity is the most nihilist concept there is. You don't believe in the possibility of something truly beautiful or meaningful in an immanent world. Therefore, our entire world is nothing to you. What good is this world when the next world is infinitely better? Why try to create anything like heaven on earth when there's heaven waiting for you just around the corner?
I hope you realize there is absolutely no mischaracterization here. I also hope you realize that the argument for communism is largely predicated on the idea of love and is therefore absolutely what a logician would deride as an appeal to emotion.
When I said that Christianity and communism were the same, I meant it on every level in a completely unanalogous way. They are literally the same feelings/ideas but spoken through different words/narratives. Christians call it the second coming. It is the hope for something better. Social hope is the basis for all revolutionary action.
This point I do not want to argue with you on, since I know Christianity is all about humanity as the lowest scum, the dirty mirror, the sinful wretch. I cannot change what Christianity says. There is no argument against an absolute truth laid out in a book that you must obey. But I can tell you that I highly disapprove of your thinking. I gave you all the reasons why.
Perfect love dispenses with individuality and self-interest. But our love is not perfect, because we're not perfect. And even then, this is thinking of familial love, which is not easily transferred to just anyone else. If we could all love each other in the same way that we love our spouses or our children, perhaps Communism could work. But I don't think we can.I know you don't. I've read Lewis's great work on love.
I suddenly think now I understand just how Christianity and capitalism are compatible. It's because you believe that mankind is forever doomed to be this selfish fiend. You don't believe that a society could function where people would look out for others and not just for themselves. You have no social hope, because that hope is exhausted in your idea of the second coming. There is no place for heaven on earth.
So you just let our immanent existences be the hell it is. Everyone out for themselves. Everyone for their own self interest. Everyone rejoicing at the failure of the others. A world of material prosperity powered by evil. I understand this sentiment. How dare a government try to improve the world? How dare we try to relieve suffering through our powers? That is the ultimate arrogance.
Let this world burn as the crapstack it is. True happiness can only be found in heaven.
It's pretty much the entire reason why you don't think government can ever do anything right. The question I asked above -- "why can't the government just change its ways and, well, BE SMARTER?" -- is already answered. You think that this is impossible, because people are just too evil to account for. Only a becoming-one with God can account for the evil in man. Only some transcendental force of good can wipe out that inner chaos.
Thank you, Yoda. I get it now. I get you. Your views couldn't be more consistent.
Regarding the army example: do you think we'd have the same size army if we didn't pay them anything other than their expenses?No. But we'd still have people who'd join out of love. That is the beginning of communism. The source of power that would rule such a society: a society fully on love. If there is one person on earth who sacrifices himself for the good of others, I believe that we all can do so in his image.
I was never kidding when I said I was a Christian.
Note: Feel free to reply piece-wise to this thing, ridicule it (seriously, if you are offended by this, just ridicule it [I deserve it :(]) or, better yet, not at all, because I immediately feel uncertain again about what I have said. Except the ending about Christianity. That I have feel strongly about. However, the whole point of it was to establish a fundamental incommensurability between your views and my views despite the fact that they are really the same thing.
As long as you believe there is a transcendent plane, we can never be allies in fighting for our object of hope.
will.15
06-14-11, 07:53 PM
When have we had deflation and there has been long periods when Republicans have been in charge when the national minimum wage was not raised. It may never go down, but it has not kept up with the rate of inflation either. That statement didn't make a whole lot of sense.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 07:56 PM
Just out of curiosity what is the minimum wage stateside these days?
planet news
06-14-11, 08:00 PM
$7.25 here. But I just checked and it varies greatly across the states. Some have none.
will.15
06-14-11, 08:04 PM
That is the federal minimum, states that have none do, it is the federal amount. States can have higher than the fed level, but not less.
planet news
06-14-11, 08:06 PM
Oh ok. There're also some extra caveats for small businesses, etc. to have less, but that's fine, I guess.
D'oh, was answering the minimum wage question but PN beat me to it.
Re: Will's comment about inflation. Whether or not it has kept up with inflation depends on when you start measuring. It was $4.25 in 1994 (I know, because I was getting it at the time), and that'd be $6.45 in today's money. So it's risen faster than the rate of inflation over the last 17 years. But regardless:
1) Accounting for inflation means it wildly goes up sometimes, too. It was over $10 in "real" terms in the late 60s because of deflation.
2) Whatever the effects of inflation, the minimum wage is an incredibly misguided idea. It violates basic economic freedoms and hurts the people it's intended to help.
There are lots of terrible ideas that not many people believe. And there are lots of pretty bad ideas that a lot of people believe. But I can't think of an economic issue that has a larger gap between the quality of the idea and how widely it is supported.
will.15
06-14-11, 08:09 PM
Does anyone really think 7.25 keeps up with inflation?
Note: Feel free to reply piece-wise to this thing, ridicule it (seriously, if you are offended by this, just ridicule it [I deserve it :(]) or, better yet, not at all, because I immediately feel uncertain again about what I have said. Except the ending about Christianity. That I have feel strongly about. However, the whole point of it was to establish a fundamental incommensurability between your views and my views despite the fact that they are really the same thing.
No worries. I'm a little perturbed, but not offended. I'll take a little more time than usual to respond to it, partially because I promised Courtney we'd go for a walk in a minute, partially because I have a few things to do this evening, and partially because you gave me a lot to respond to, consider, and unravel.
It will not surprise you to learn that I do not think Christianity to be as nihilistic as you do. Hopefully I'll be able to explain why adequately.
Does anyone really think 7.25 keeps up with inflation?
I don't understand this question. If you're asking if $7.25 will buy as much in 20 years as it does now, then no. But that also doesn't mean they're not going to raise the minimum wage again.
If you're asking whether or not $7.25 represents a keeping-up-with-inflation total, then you need to provide a baseline. As I pointed out, it MORE than keeps up with inflation if you go back to 1994. If you go back some other amount of time, it may or may not depending on exactly where you draw the line.
will.15
06-14-11, 08:15 PM
It was 3.35 in 1981, so during a decade of high inflation, the minimum wage only went up a dollar, hardly during that period keeping up with the rate of inflation.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 08:19 PM
Don't be mad, but i believe the minimum wage in manitoba is $10/hr.
I don't imagine many people outside of highschool kids folden clothes at the Gap work for $7.25 though.
will.15
06-14-11, 08:23 PM
Let us remember until the bank crisis unemployment was historically low with some retailers unable to attract workers at the minimum wage so the notion the minimum wage has anything to do with the unemployment rate is absurd.
It was 3.35 in 1981, so during a decade of high inflation, the minimum wage only went up a dollar, hardly during that period keeping up with the rate of inflation.
Right. Didn't during that period, and it more than did recently. It also more than kept up with inflation over the last 60-70 years. As inflation has increased more reliably recently, so to have we see, more regular increases in the minimum wage.
It's all academic, though, because it's not a good idea regardless of how well it keeps up with inflation.
Let us remember until the bank crisis unemployment was historically low with some retailers unable to attract workers at the minimum wage so the notion the minimum wage has anything to do with the unemployment rate is absurd.
This is simply a non-sequitur. The fact that there was a specific period in time where the job market was so healthy that people had to offer more than the minimum wage to attract workers does not in any way suggest that there is no correlation, or even that it doesn't negatively impact unemployment. It only means that, within that time frame, whatever impact it may have had was easily mitigated by other factors. What you're saying is the equivalent of "it can't be hot out because my air conditioned room is way too cold." In reality, it'd just be even colder if it weren't so hot out.
It should be obvious that the minimum wage impacts unemployment to some degree. If the minimum wage were $100, fewer people would be hired. Ditto for $50 an hour, or $20. As long as there are any tasks that are worth less than the minimum wage to any employer, the minimum wage will cause more unemployment than there otherwise would be. And this is without even getting into the other costs associated with hiring and firing, such as the time, effort, training, and even unemployment insurance, which means the real baseline on the employer side is even higher than that.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 08:57 PM
Right. Didn't during that period, and it more than did recently. It also more than kept up with inflation over the last 60-70 years. As inflation has increased more reliably recently, so to have we see, more regular increases in the minimum wage.
It's all academic, though, because it's not a good idea regardless of how well it keeps up with inflation.
This is simply a non-sequitur. The fact that there was a specific period in time where the job market was so healthy that people had to offer more than the minimum wage to attract workers does not in any way suggest that there is no correlation, or even that it doesn't negatively impact unemployment. It only means that, within that time frame, whatever impact it may have had was easily mitigated by other factors. What you're saying is the equivalent of "it can't be hot out because my air conditioned room is way too cold." In reality, it'd just be even colder if it weren't so hot out.
It should be obvious that the minimum wage impacts unemployment to some degree. If the minimum wage were $100, fewer people would be hired. Ditto for $50 an hour, or $20. As long as there are any tasks that are worth less than the minimum wage to any employer, the minimum wage will cause more unemployment than there otherwise would be. And this is without even getting into the other costs associated with hiring and firing, such as the time, effort, training, and even unemployment insurance, which means the real baseline on the employer side is even higher than that.
wouldnt they just raise their prices to adjust to the market?
$20 an hour minimum would produce a booming economy.
wouldnt they just raise their prices to adjust to the market?
Which would accomplish what, exactly? If we all make twice as much, and everything costs twice as much, we're exactly where we started.
$20 an hour minimum would produce a booming economy.
How would it do that? It wouldn't make it easier to distribute things or build new technologies, or do any of the things that actually increase our standard of living. Paper money is a means to that end; it isn't wealth in and of itself. If we all wrote one extra "0" on the end of our bills tomorrow, we wouldn't be any richer.
Heck, if massive growth could be accomplished by simply raising the minimum wage, why shouldn't it be $50 an hour? $100? $5,000?
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 11:15 PM
Paper money is a means to that end; it isn't wealth in and of itself. If we all wrote one extra "0" on the end of our bills tomorrow, we wouldn't be any richer.
Well that largely would depend on what you spent your new found dough on. Many would buy cars. I buy real estate.
planet news
06-14-11, 11:27 PM
I don't see what's so wrong with a minimum wage as minimum or minimum health care as minimum.
If people want it raised, just don't. What's the problem here? Don't raise it until inflation and such dictates, at which point you wouldn't have even raised it.
The idea of a minimum is so no one walks around the streets begging for money. It's a right because -- to bring it back to abortion a bit -- the human is special, and we should treat the human with dignity and respect. Letting any human crawl around on the street like a dog is not good.
Unless you're a Brahmin.
will.15
06-14-11, 11:28 PM
It is a minimum wage, not a maximum wage. Obviously the idea is to provide a mimimum standard, not a comfortable level of living. You make it too high you trigger inflation.
planet news
06-14-11, 11:32 PM
Yeah, I agree. I don't know why things have to raise. I know people would naturally want it raised, but the government can just simply say know, because that defeats the purpose of the wage.
It's not supposed to be a broken window. It's supposed to be a minimal ethical standard regardless of the economy. Now, if it starts damaging the economy (which at this point it's so freaking low, it's has no chance of doing) maybe we should look into it.
I just don't get why it's claim to be a slippery slope to "maximum wage".
Well that largely would depend on what you spent your new found dough on. Many would buy cars. I buy real estate.
Well, that's certainly the way to go relative to car-buying, but the point is that if everyone added a "0" to the end of their bills, everyone would add a "0" to the price, too.
Raising the minimum wage to increase economic growth is like me saying I'm taller when I list my height in centimeters. :D
planet news
06-14-11, 11:34 PM
Raising the minimum wage to increase economic growth is like me saying I'm taller when I list my height in centimeters. :DYeah. I think I now agree with stuff like this. I mean, I was never a Keynesian, but I definitely will never be now. :cool:
But it's like abortion in that it's not a purely pragmatic scenario. There are ethics involved. We don't want wage slavery.
You guys ever hear the phrase "not right, not even wrong"? It refers to a question whose suppositions are off to the point at which you can't even say the statement is wrong. As in, it's not even asking the right question or operating under the same assumptions. That's how I feel about the minimum wage discussion at the moment.
I'll whip something up tomorrow explaining why the minimum wage is ridiculous. And no, it's not based on the idea that it will lead to a "maximum wage." That isn't even my phrase.
planet news
06-14-11, 11:39 PM
Actually looking forward to it believe it or not. :)
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 11:42 PM
Yoda, does Pennsylvania have a powerball mega lottery?
will.15
06-14-11, 11:50 PM
I just want to point out the minimum wage started under the Kennedy administration, a big supporter, and was a whopping dollar an hour. What is significant about this there are a lot of neoconservatives who claims the party left them, they didn't change (bullcrap) and that Kennedy was a conservative by modern standards and would be a Republican today. Most of those neoconservatives don't like the minimum wage and are hostile to the New Deal and social programs, all supported by Kennedy, so they don't know what they are talking about. They just like Kennedy and don't want to disown him.
Yoda, does Pennsylvania have a powerball mega lottery?
Yeah, I think so.
DexterRiley
06-14-11, 11:58 PM
buck an hour was decent cabbage in the early 60's for a minimum wage.
My dad barely cracked 2 grand a year in 62' teaching school.
I just want to point out the minimum wage started under the Kennedy administration, a big supporter, and was a whopping dollar an hour. What is significant about this there are a lot of neoconservatives who claims the party left them, they didn't change (bullcrap) and that Kennedy was a conservative by modern standards and would be a Republican today. Most of those neoconservatives don't like the minimum wage and are hostile to the New Deal and social programs, all supported by Kennedy, so they don't know what they are talking about. They just like Kennedy and don't want to disown him.
I've read this four times and I can't for the life of me figure out what you're getting at. Some nameless neoconservatives say that JFK would be a Republican today but they still disagree with him about some things. Okay?
will.15
06-15-11, 12:07 AM
They won't admit they have any disagreements with him, they distort and lie about his record, and say Kennedy as he was then with the exact same positions would be a Republican today. It is a broken record with those guys because they want to create a fantasy that they haven't changed their political views.
DexterRiley
06-15-11, 12:12 AM
Well before this thread spins off the rails, Here's somethen cool to buy for those days in Pittsburgh when the traffic gets to be a bit much.
I mean in the totally unlikely event you hit the power-ball i mean.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO4cw565V98&feature=related
http://www.watercar.com/assets/images/python5.jpg
What I'm fuzzy on is:
1) Who are "they"? Specifically.
2) How does this defend the minimum wage in any way?
And, for the heck of it:
3) Lots of Republicans support the basic tenets of the New Deal. Kennedy was strong on defense and cut taxes dramatically. And given that he was Catholic and appointed a pro-life judge, it seems reasonable to think he was probably (though not demonstrably) pro-life. The fact that some neoconservatives (who?) might be hypocrites doesn't mean they're wrong about him resembling modern-day Republicans more than modern-day Democrats.
It's #2 I'm most concerned with, though. This seems like a completely random excuse to criticize conservatives despite it having no real link to the discussion at hand. Which you're free to do, I just don't "get" the point of it.
DexterRiley
06-15-11, 12:22 AM
I need u to buy the Python Yodes, so i can justify the purchase of the gator to my wife.
:D
http://www.watercar.com/assets/images/Gator-Red-Havasu.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDmMCiWZoTc
Ha. It's like a personal version of those "Ducky Tour" car/boat combos we see around here. Have you ever run into those? They make a particular amount of sense here in Pittsburgh, where they can take people on a tour of downtown and then slide right into one of the three rivers.
planet news
06-15-11, 12:24 AM
What is happening right now?
DexterRiley
06-15-11, 12:32 AM
Ha. It's like a personal version of those "Ducky Tour" car/boat combos we see around here. Have you ever run into those? They make a particular amount of sense here in Pittsburgh, where they can take people on a tour of downtown and then slide right into one of the three rivers.
Well the python has a Vette engine, and kinda looks like a tricked out Chevy SSR.
its a badass ride.
planet news
06-15-11, 01:26 AM
I just took a shower. I think I know what Yoda is going to say about minimum wage. I am 80% sure about this.
He's going to say that minimum wage is fundamentally stupid, because not all tasks are even worth minimum wage. He's said it before, and I've just read about it in a book.
The idea is that you can't create a minimum wage, because then someone could just be sitting around doing nothing and get paid, which is madness. In other words, it's just better for the employer to pay whatever they think is worth the job, and if the worker doesn't think its worth his time, he won't work there plain and simple. There is not only no need for a minimum wage, but the minimum wage is fundamentally crippling to the employer who needs to be able to pay as much as he thinks a job is worth; not some arbitrary amount.
I'm not totally sure this is true, but I'm pretty sure this is what he's going to say.
Peace, guys. :)
Sexy Celebrity
06-15-11, 03:13 AM
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_-iN-28VxLQ4/Rb5QRszPTFI/AAAAAAAAACU/YJd0J9n4q2U/s200/Jailed-Monkey.jpg
I know you're all here because you branched off from the Abortion thread, but the thing is, I was swingin' on that branch, so here I am.
will.15
06-15-11, 03:36 AM
Tell that to the farmworkers who were receiving horrible pay for labor intensive jobs Americans wouldn't do. Americans still won't do it, but thanks to unions and minimum wage they are better paid and work under better conditions.
I won't respond to what PN said in detail because I think or hope Yoda's position makes more sense than the way PN said it.
TheUsualSuspect
06-15-11, 04:32 AM
Everyone just watch SiCKO and be done with it.
BTW - Minimum wage where I live is 10.25/hr. How people make less than that is beyond me.
will.15
06-15-11, 05:32 AM
What I'm fuzzy on is:
1) Who are "they"? Specifically.
2) How does this defend the minimum wage in any way?
To come up with specific names is hard because I don't pay attention to them individually, but certainly a constant repeater of Kennedy would be a Republican today, and I didn't leave the Republican party, it left me, is talk show host Dennis Prager, and has had guests on his show who have said the same thing, despite the fact he is very, very hard right conservative on everything, not just foreign policy. Prager is a national host. The late George Putnam who was only local and still doing his show into his nineties was of the same school, only bizarrely he never changed his registration, but only supported the most conservative Republicans, and was very extreme in his views, a big supporter of Joe McCcarthy.
It is only relevant because many other Republicans like Sean Hannety have also appropriated Kennedy as one of their own when he was a social liberal.
And, for the heck of it:
3) Lots of Republicans support the basic tenets of the New Deal. Kennedy was strong on defense and cut taxes dramatically. And given that he was Catholic and appointed a pro-life judge, it seems reasonable to think he was probably (though not demonstrably) pro-life. The fact that some neoconservatives (who?) might be hypocrites doesn't mean they're wrong about him resembling modern-day Republicans more than modern-day Democrats.
Rebuttal below:
Kennedy appointed a judge who turned out to be a pro-life judge and Bush Senior appointed a judge he thought would be conservative and turned out to be a liberal. Abortion was a non issue when Kennedy made his appointment. They like to talk about how Kennedy reduced taxes and he did, he reduced upper brackets from ninety percent to seventy percent. I don't think anyone would argue that wasn't a good idea. He was for Medicare, but couldn't get anywhere with it. Would Kennedy have stayed politically the same if he lived, shifted to the right, or gone the dovish direction the party took which happened with the escalation of the Viet Nam war under Lyndon Johnson? Bobby Kennedy whose politics were the same as his brother shifted to the left after his death due in part to the Viet Nam escalation. Teddy, of course, was no conservative. John F. Kennedy had a hawkish foreign policy when most Democrats did, but was definitely to the left of Republicans of the time on social legislation. The neocons love to embrace Kennedy, but are silent on the more controversial LBJ who emerged as a clear old style unambiguous liberal on domestic legislation with his Great Society, but had a very hawkish anti Communist foreign policy. There is no way to know if Kennedy would have amped up the war like LBJ if he lived or would have withdrawn.
It's #2 I'm most concerned with, though. This seems like a completely random excuse to criticize conservatives despite it having no real link to the discussion at hand. Which you're free to do, I just don't "get" the point of it.
As I said before, JFK is the Republicans' favorite Democrat, but except that he embraced an anti Communist foreign policy when it was mainstream in his party, he was to the left of any Republican in Congress today except arguably Susan Collins and Olympia Snow. He cut taxes, didn't slash them, which Repubs like, but gloss over the inconvenient fact he also introduced the minimum wage, which most of them dislike, and which hardly supports their insistence he was more like a Republican than a Dem.
Brodinski
06-15-11, 09:10 AM
Oh, I wasn't suggesting that it was about people abusing the system at all. I'm saying that this is simply what entitlement programs naturally do, even without abuse: they grow and grow, for the reasons you state and others. As conceived they are completely unsustainable. Various things in the United States, such as our overall wealth and ability to print money and dilute its value, masks this fact. But in other economies like Greece, we see what it leads to.
And when other forms of mismanagement occur (or even without them, eventually), entitlements need to be heavily reformed. And, shockingly, we find that people feel entitled to their entitlements. ;) That's why they're so financially destructive: a combination of utter insolvency with a moral component that causes the citizenry to resist their reform.
You make some good and valid points here. Yes, entitlement programs will continue to grow. Eventually, there will need to be reforms, which is what Europe is reccommending for a LOT of European countries.
Take Belgium for instance. Europe has reccommended Belgium to save € 22 billion over 4 years to solve our country's budget problems. That's $ 31,494,100,000 over 4 years. That is a sickening amount for a country like Belgium.
Here's what our top academics and experts in the field are suggesting to somehow come to € 22 billion:
A nuclear tax of about € 500 million
An estimated 13,000 civil servants will take their early retirement during 2011-2015. The plan is to not replace all of them, so € 400 million can be saved
A social security contribution of 1 % on all incomes (starting from € 13,000 a year) will give us € 1,8 billion.
Unemployment payments (don't know the exact term in English) are granted to unemployed job seekers on an UNLIMITED basis, as long as they can show that they are actually looking for a job. A possibility is to lower the payments depending on the duration of your unemployment. Another possibility is to limit them to 2 years. That last measure will in theory save € 3 billion, but in practice you don't have to be a genious to figure out that a lot of them will live off social welfare or sickness insurance.
Upping the pensionable age.
Cutting back the growth of the healtcare expenses from 4.5 % to 2.5 - 2 % could result in a saving of € 4 billion.
Naturally, there are other options and possibilities, but I've discussed the ones that are pertinent to this discussion. Of course, this is all theory. In reality, the top servants of federal budgetting don't even consider the savings from cutting back on healtchare expenses as REAL savings, because these will be needed to finance our increasing pension expenses.
Chris, you are spot on when you say reforms are eventually necessary. Our politicians will need to bite the bullet and reform social security and pensions; otherwise the boat will sink.
That being said, what government will dare to put forward these drastic measures? They'll get slayed come next elections. I hope some political courage can be found to push on with these reforms, as they are absolutely vital, not just in Belgium but all over Europe.
People are talking about climbing out of the pit that was created due to the global crisis from 2007-2009, but the fact is that we haven't even seen the bottom of it when it comes to us as individuals. Those government savings are real and necessary. I don't have a particularly positive outlook on the future. I'm not naive, but most people are. They just go about their daily business, not caring or even knowing about all of this.
I got behind fast - I'll catch up and reply later today.
BTW - Minimum wage where I live is 10.25/hr. How people make less than that is beyond me.
You live in Ontario, right? Because your two neighboring provinces -- Manitoba and Quebec, both have lower minimum wages and, at least somewhat consequently, lower unemployment. Dramatically lower in Manitoba's case. Ontario has the second-highest minimum wage in Canada and its unemployment is above the national average. And though I'm drawing this data from disparate sources, it seems as if the only province with a higher minimum wage -- Nunavut -- has an even higher unemployment rate.
People make less and get by for a variety of reasons. Not everyone who has a job needs to raise an entire family on it. A kid living at home, or a student, still needs a job even if it's just flipping burgers. Working fast food or retail isn't often worth a large hourly rate, and it can't be made to be worth it through legislation. The result of minimum wage laws is higher unemployment in general, and younger workers are generally the primary victims.
Re: Brodinski's post. Not much I can say. It sounds like we completely agree. And thanks for that legwork; the numbers are simultaneously scary and fascinating. I think a lot of countries are headed for this sort of financial reckoning. I only hope my own has the wisdom and courage to confront the issue before it's forced to do so.
Alrighty. The minimum wage is a bad policy for three reasons. The first is conceptual, and the other two pragmatic.
1) Employment is a private contract. We don't expect the government to make sure we're paying the right amount for an apple, a car, or a movie ticket. We don't expect them to nanny us through every financial decision. In all other walks of life, it is understood that people must determine what things are worth to them and make a simple decision about whether or not to proceed. But when it comes to jobs, we suddenly decide that people cannot do this for themselves. We treat jobs like things people are forced into, rather than things they can walk away from at any time.
2) The minimum wage increases unemployment. Of course it does. If a task is worth $5/hour to the person who needs it done, and the minimum wage is $6/hour, then the person willing to do it simply doesn't get hired. The minimum wage does not help the people who need it most, it only sort-of helps the people a notch above them, because they're the ones who manage to keep their job at the higher wage. Others lose the job, or else aren't hired in the first place.
And it might not even benefit the people who keep their jobs, because that work usually has to get done one way or another. So it goes to the person who's just been granted a raise. So if you're not worth the new wage, you're unemployed. If you are, you're employed, make a little more, but you pick up the slack for the people who can't be hired any more. Why is this good?
3) Government is not flexible enough. Even if we were to ignore the points above, even if we were to merely posit that the minimum wage definitely helps people, etc., that would still leave us to determine whether or not the government is capable of managing it properly. I see little reason to believe that it is. As we've established, the minimum wage doesn't ever go down. But sometimes it should, if we have significant deflation. But it hasn't. And how could it? When the rhetoric is all about providing a living wage, and helping poor people, how could you possibly turn around and make the case that it should be lowered? The rhetoric used to sell the minimum wage simultaneously stops it from being reduced, even when deflation means it's suddenly much higher.
There's also the simple matter of speed. A parliamentary body is never going to move as fast as the market, and the gulf between the two only figures to get worse in the coming decades as businesses gain the ability, through technology, to react faster and faster to changing circumstances. Except, of course, when they bump up against archaic government price floors and ceilings.
So, in summary: the minimum wage is a private agreement that the government has no place in, has little ability to manage properly anyway, and which has the opposite of its intended effect. To simply declare that every job is worth $X an hour is like simply declaring that there should be more gold in the world. Does simply decreeing it make it easier to find, or mine, or smelt, or transport? Of course not. And simply declaring that a job is worth however much per hour doesn't make it so, either. We cannot wallpaper over economic reality with legislative declarations.
DexterRiley
06-15-11, 12:57 PM
You live in Ontario, right? Because your two neighboring provinces -- Manitoba and Quebec, both have lower minimum wages and, at least somewhat consequently, lower unemployment. Dramatically lower in Manitoba's case. Ontario has the second-highest minimum wage in Canada and its unemployment is above the national average. And though I'm drawing this data from disparate sources, it seems as if the only province with a higher minimum wage -- Nunavut -- has an even higher unemployment rate.
People make less and get by for a variety of reasons. Not everyone who has a job needs to raise an entire family on it. A kid living at home, or a student, still needs a job even if it's just flipping burgers. Working fast food or retail isn't often worth a large hourly rate, and it can't be made to be worth it through legislation. The result of minimum wage laws is higher unemployment in general, and younger workers are generally the primary victims.
Ontario is a big place.
$10.25 and hour in Toronto say, is piddley for anyone on their own. I don't know how they could survive really, unless they lived in a flea-bag rooming house.
At the same time in northern Ontario where folks "toys" (snow-mobiles, motor bikes and such) routinely total more than the cost of their house, 10 bones is easily doable.
Nunavet is little more than a Rez located in an area the Frost Giants would bitch about.
"an area the Frost Giants would bitch about." :laugh: Love it.
I was actually going to ask about that, because some of the economic numbers I'm looking at are pretty weird, and based on the location I was assuming some of them are far more rural/less developed, or less accessible or something similar.
But you make an interesting point about size. Sounds like an argument against a "one-size-fits-all" wage, even putting all the other issues about the idea aside.
Brodinski
06-15-11, 02:45 PM
So, in summary: the minimum wage is a private agreement that the government has no place in, has little ability to manage properly anyway, and which has the opposite of its intended effect. To simply declare that every job is worth $X an hour is like simply declaring that there should be more gold in the world. Does simply decreeing it make it easier to find, or mine, or smelt, or transport? Of course not. And simply declaring that a job is worth however much per hour doesn't make it so, either. We cannot wallpaper over economic reality with legislative declarations.
Hmm, I agree with you to some extent. There is a great deal of empirical evidence (albeit mostly American) that points out that a minimum wage actually increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers.
I am a proponent of the collective bargaining arrangements of Germany (and some other EU countries). There is no nation-wide legally required minimum wage, but minimum wage standards are determined by the various industrial sectors through negociations between employers and employee representatives.
will.15
06-15-11, 02:57 PM
Serious deflation, we never have had it in the twentieth century or this one (I don't know before then) and the economy would be in serious doo-doo if it did. There would be a whole lot to worry about than just that.
Oh, I just found out Kennedy also increased Social Security benefits. That is something else the neocons never bring up. I'll have to read a little more. I thought Kennedy introduced the minimum wage, but he might hve just increased it, so I'll have to trace when that started.
will.15
06-15-11, 03:05 PM
Look at this. Kennedy was an even bigger liberal than I thought:
Amongst the legislation passed by Congress during the Kennedy administration, unemployment benefits (http://www.movieforums.com/wiki/Unemployment_benefits) were expanded, aid was provided to cities to improve housing and transportation, funds were allocated to continue the construction of a national highway system started under Eisenhower, a water pollution control act was passed to protect the country’s rivers and streams, and an agricultural act to raise farmers’ incomes was made law.[3] (http://www.movieforums.com/community/#cite_note-2) A significant amount of anti-poverty legislation was passed by Congress, including increases in social security benefits and in the minimum wage, several housing bills, and aid to economically distressed areas. A few antirecession public works packages,[4] (http://www.movieforums.com/community/#cite_note-3) together with a number of measures designed to assist farmers,[5] (http://www.movieforums.com/community/#cite_note-4) were introduced. Major expansions and improvements were made in Social Security (including retirement at 62 for men), hospital construction, library services, family farm assistance and reclamation.[6] (http://www.movieforums.com/community/#cite_note-5) Food stamps for low-income Americans were reintroduced, food distribution to the poor was increased, and there was an expansion in school milk and school lunch distribution.[7] (http://www.movieforums.com/community/#cite_note-6) The most comprehensive farm legislation since 1938 was carried out, with expansions in rural electrification, soil conservation, crop insurance, farm credit, and marketing orders
FDR started the minimum wage at a whopping 25 cents an hour. Kennedy apparently gave it a huge increase. When you look at the entire Kennedy record, conservatives who focus on the tax cuts to prove Kennedy would be a Republican today are distorting his records by deliberately leaving out all the social programs he also increased or introduced.
I nailed it down. Kennedy raised the minimum wage higer than I thought, to $1.25, and that was the first increase since it was introduced over thirty years earlier, so he raised it an entire dollar from twenty-five cents. Some conservative he was. And all the conservatives who point at him cutting income taxes talk about how it boosted the economy. They neglect to mention his enormous increase in the minimum wage, which apparently didn't hurt the unemployment rate at all.
I think I have made it all relevent now by stumbling through it.
What on earth spurred this, exactly? Why are we talking about hypocritical neoconservatives? You're free to discuss whatever you please, obviously, but I'm perplexed as to why this is suddenly a focal point. Are you just using the minimum wage to segue into something else entirely?
Also, if your goal was to merely weaken "JFK would be a Republican" into "JFK was more conservative than today's Democrats," then you've convinced me. Not sure if that makes the statement about party affiliation absurd so much as a partisan exaggeration, though.
will.15
06-15-11, 04:06 PM
What on earth spurred this, exactly? Why are we talking about hypocritical neoconservatives? You're free to discuss whatever you please, obviously, but I'm perplexed as to why this is suddenly a focal point. Are you just using the minimum wage to segue into something else entirely?
Also, if your goal was to merely weaken "JFK would be a Republican" into "JFK was more conservative than today's Democrats," then you've convinced me. Not sure if that makes the statement about party affiliation absurd so much as a partisan exaggeration, though.
I nailed it down. Kennedy raised the minimum wage higher than I thought, to $1.25, and that was the first increase since it was introduced over thirty years earlier, so he raised it an entire dollar from twenty-five cents. Some conservative he was. And all the conservatives who point at him cutting income taxes talk about how it boosted the economy, they neglect to mention his enormous increase in the minimum wage, which apparently didn't hurt the unemployment rate at all.
I think I have made it all relevent now by stumbling through it.
It is more than partisan exaggeration because they make a case for it by quoting excerpts from speeches and pointing out parts of his program that support their claims while ignoring other staements and policies that paint a different picture.
I nailed it down. Kennedy raised the minimum wage higher than I thought, to $1.25, and that was the first increase since it was introduced over thirty years earlier, so he raised it an entire dollar from twenty-five cents. Some conservative he was.
The minimum wage is broadly supported across party lines today, so this isn't really much of an argument against Kennedy's conservatism. It's certainly more supported by Democrats, but neither party really puts up a fuss about it.
And all the conservatives who point at him cutting income taxes talk about how it boosted the economy, they neglect to mention his enormous increase in the minimum wage, which apparently didn't hurt the unemployment rate at all.
As I pointed out the last time you said something like this, this simply does not follow. If you're doing something that should lower the unemployment rate at the same time you're doing something that will raise it, it doesn't mean that the latter isn't happening just because it's been offset by something else. That's a non-sequitur.
Also, which do you think is more of a litmus test for Republicans: tax cuts or minimum wage? Does the latter even come up in any campaign, or debate? These issues are not one-to-one. Support for tax cuts goes a much longer way towards establishing someone's conservatism than support for the minimum wage goes against it. It's not even close. And this is assuming all conservatives are against it to begin with. Most are not, sorry to say, or at least don't much care.
I think I have made it all relevent now by stumbling through it.
I'm still pretty confused as to what this has to do with the relative wisdom (or lack therefor) with the minimum wage. Is the only connection that Kennedy raised it? Is that the pivot point being used as a pretext to talk about hypocritical neoconservatives?
Most people don't want a thing to do with the doctor most of the time if they can avoid it. Going to the doctors is a hassle.
That might be true of most normal, employed, fairly healthy people who have lots of things to do and little time to do it in. But that still leaves millions of people who will repeatedly go to doctors for little or no reason. My second ex-wife did that alot.
It also was true when I was a medical records clerk at an outpatient dispensary in the Army. You'd be surprised how many people turn up for sick call when they don't have to pay for the treatment.
Plus I heard a story like this just a while back on some elitist liberal news media show, and the fact is in countries where people can get away with doing this, it's not a problem for the people working, because since the person doesn't have any real problems, no real work has to be done to help that person. They just let them walk around and make conversation.
Not only have you never been on Army sick call, you must not have spent much time around emergency rooms either.
I don't know about state socialism, but Christianity and communism are exactly the same philosophy. I mean this in a completely literal non-metaphorical way.
They are literally related on a one-to-one basis if you switch out the same words for the same words.
They are the same thing. Period.
Statements like this give me the impression you don't know much about the basics of communism or Christianity.
I just want to point out the minimum wage started under the Kennedy administration, a big supporter, and was a whopping dollar an hour.
Are you sure of that? I seem to recall there being a minimum wage long before Kennedy was even in the Senate. When I was 17, I was riding a dynamite truck putting explosives in drillholes on a seismic crew for $1.25/hr., which I think was the minimum wage at the time. Of course that was 51 years ago, so maybe I'm mis-remembering.
will.15
06-15-11, 07:24 PM
I corrected it later. Roosevelt started it at a quarter, but it didn't get raised until Kennedy. Local states could have had their own minimum wage.
Kennedy raised the minimum wage higer than I thought, to $1.25, and that was the first increase since it was introduced over thirty years earlier.
Well, I haven't done a web search and I suppose you have, but this still sounds off to me, because I seem to remember the minimum wage going from 50 cents an hour to 75 cents an hour and later to $1 an hour back when I was a kid flipping burgers in an ice cream store and tearing tickets at the local cinema.
30 years without a change in the minimum wage seems an awfully long time considering the Democrats had both the presidency and Congress during much of that time.
DexterRiley
06-15-11, 07:36 PM
That might be true of most normal, employed, fairly healthy people who have lots of things to do and little time to do it in. But that still leaves millions of people who will repeatedly go to doctors for little or no reason. My second ex-wife did that alot.
It also was true when I was a medical records clerk at an outpatient dispensary in the Army. You'd be surprised how many people turn up for sick call when they don't have to pay for the treatment.
Not only have you never been on Army sick call, you must not have spent much time around emergency rooms either.
Anectotal evidence is awesome.
Here's mine.
My mothers' father lived in Niagra Falls Ontario, but was employed as a mechanical engineer in Niagra Falls New York. One Day while on site, he collapsed, seems his pace maker was letten him down. Off to the hospital he went to get emergency by-pass surgery.
The company medical insurance, for which he paid into for 45 years balked at picken up the tab because of the pre-existing condition thingy.
The bill was a shade over a 100 grand, and grandpa sold the house that he had built to pay the note.
America F+ck yeah !
will.15
06-15-11, 07:48 PM
Well, I haven't done a web search and I suppose you have, but this still sounds off to me, because I seem to remember the minimum wage going from 50 cents an hour to 75 cents an hour and later to $1 an hour back when I was a kid flipping burgers in an ice cream store and tearing tickets at the local cinema.
30 years without a change in the minimum wage seems an awfully long time considering the Democrats had both the presidency and Congress during much of that time.
I misread the other source I was looking at.
The FLSA introduced sweeping regulations to protect American workers from being exploited, and created a mandatory federal minimum wage of 25 cents an hour in order to maintain a "minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and general well-being, without substantially curtailing employment". This new law was welcomed as a godsend by the thousands of workers who were previously forced to work for a fraction of that amount, but was violently opposed by many employers and fiscal conservatives who argued that a minimum wage could hurt employers (http://www.minimum-wage.org/raising-minimum-wage.asp). In addition to establishing a mandatory nation-wide minimum wage the Fair Labor Standards Act introduced many other worker's protection laws still in effect today, including banning child labor and establishing workplace safety statutes.
In the years since the FLSA was introduced, the federal minimum wage was revised by Congress every few years to account for inflation and the ever rising cost of living (although, in the years after the FLSA was introduced, Congress has actually reduced the Minimum Wage several times). In 1997, President Bill Clinton introduced legislation allowing individual states to set their own minimum wage rates, and as a result several states have minimum wages that are higher then the federal minimum wage (see list of state minimum wage rates (http://www.minimum-wage.org/wage-by-state.asp)
I misread the other source I was looking at.
The FLSA introduced sweeping regulations to protect American workers from being exploited, and created a mandatory federal minimum wage of 25 cents an hour in order to maintain a "minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and general well-being, without substantially curtailing employment". This new law was welcomed as a godsend by the thousands of workers who were previously forced to work for a fraction of that amount, but was violently opposed by many employers and fiscal conservatives who argued that a minimum wage could hurt employers (http://www.minimum-wage.org/raising-minimum-wage.asp). In addition to establishing a mandatory nation-wide minimum wage the Fair Labor Standards Act introduced many other worker's protection laws still in effect today, including banning child labor and establishing workplace safety statutes.
In the years since the FLSA was introduced, the federal minimum wage was revised by Congress every few years to account for inflation and the ever rising cost of living (although, in the years after the FLSA was introduced, Congress has actually reduced the Minimum Wage several times). In 1997, President Bill Clinton introduced legislation allowing individual states to set their own minimum wage rates, and as a result several states have minimum wages that are higher then the federal minimum wage (see list of state minimum wage rates (http://www.minimum-wage.org/wage-by-state.asp)
Texas' minimum wage of $7.25/hr sounds like a damn good paycheck for unskilled labor to me!
DexterRiley
06-16-11, 05:13 PM
Texas' minimum wage of $7.25/hr sounds like a damn good paycheck for unskilled labor to me!
lol
For shats and giggles. try and live on less than $300 a week. Keep in mind that at bare minimum, $100 has to be set aside for rent out of that, as well as bus fare to get to and from work.
have fun.
Of couse it matters he started it an much of what Obama did was and extension of Bush's initiative, and a ball rolling down the hill is quite appropriate to describe the process, once you make one decision, other similar ones follow.
It can, if the increasing debt is the direct and inevitable result of one of the decisions. But it isn't. Bush choosing to issue a bail out does not require Obama to honor that, let alone issue more (which is what he did). It simply does not follow. It was not and is not inevitable at any point. Obama doubled down on it. And he supported the initial decision, anyway, for crying out loud, so I can't imagine how this defends his decisions or his judgment.
I don't see how it is not a success story, we still have three automalers instead of just one.
If your measure of success is "we have three automakers instead of just one," and that's the primary barometer you're using, then of course you consider it a success. But that's not a rational way to measure the success of the program.
Also, the companies in question would not disappear; they'd go through bankruptcy and emerge, just like countless other companies (yes, even very large ones) have.
The folks the automakers were in debt to would have not have been fully reimbursed if the companies declared bankruptcy.
And they haven't been, anyway, so we haven't averted that problem. Bankruptcy law exists to try to fairly structure and pay off debt. It is for exactly this sort of situation.
The problem, in a nutshell (insofar as it can be reduced to that size at all), is that we didn't stop there from being winners and losers, we just changed who the winners and losers were.
The autoworkers union members are autoworkers and I think it is a good thing they own more of the company.
This really ought to be qualified. It's not just inherently good that they own more. What if you just randomly took 10% of every large company and gave it to their union? Would that be good? Or does it depend on how and why the union gets more control?
They got it by making major concessions in their employment agreement and more company and union cooperation is a good thing. The results show that.
These "major concessions" were forced on them by necessity, which makes calling them "concessions" a misnomer. And it's their employment agreement and its dramatic overreach with pensions that caused the business to go bankrupt in the first place!
So let's recap: they, through collective bargaining and various other means, secure ever-increasingly favorable benefits, pensions, and other entitlements. These are financially untenable in the long-term, but they get them anyway. Eventually, the "long term" becomes now, and the industry collapses, unable to support these agreements. The government steps in and uses taxpayer money to alter the standard bankruptcy process so that the unions control more of the company than they otherwise would have. They make necessary "concessions" to their untenable arrangement (without which they would all lose their jobs), and are praised for their willingness to negotiate. WHAT?
Triple the amounts and see if that makes the situation look ridiculous: if you negotiate a $1/million a year salary, and it's so untenable that your employer goes broke, are you really conceding anything when you accept less in order to keep your job? Clearly, no, because it is your exorbitant victory in negotiation that caused the crisis. Once this is established, the only point of contention should be whether or not union benefits were untenably high. If they were, then the rest of the argument falls apart.
This is starting to feel a lot like those situations where something is called good just because it benefits unions. That seems to be the default position for many.
It is a succes not just because the government gets most, no, not all of its money back, but because a thriving auto industry is important to the American economy. Chrysler was expendable, but General Motors?
Yeah, again, "getting our money back" is not considered a good investment in any other part of the business world. That this is a success is not a reflection of the wisdom of the policy, but of our collectively lowered expectations. Loaning money without interest is a failure.
Three other problems with this, though:
1) There is no fundamental reason why we need to have a thriving auto industry. Lots of places import cars and make other things of value. Cars are not magically tied to American economic growth or prosperity.
2) The American auto industry is not going to thrive if you bail out businesses that make poor decisions. It thrives when good decisions are rewarded and bad ones punished. Insulating a business from the results of their decisions blatantly hamstrings the competitive process.
3) Even if I were to accept that getting our money back (and the ownership restructuring, etc.) makes the outcome a good one, that wouldn't necessarily validate the risk. If the government goes to Vegas and bets $500 billion on red and loses, and then wins it back by making the same bet, they've also "gotten all their money back." That doesn't mean it was a sound decision, or a risk worth taking.
And one more bonus argument, just for the heck of it: if the auto industry was worth saving, why did government have to come in and do it? Lots of other businesses go broke and get salvaged in some form by enterprising investors who recognize the opportunity it presents.
will.15
07-17-11, 03:47 PM
It can, if the increasing debt is the direct and inevitable result of one of the decisions. But it isn't. Bush choosing to issue a bail out does not require Obama to honor that, let alone issue more (which is what he did). It simply does not follow. It was not and is not inevitable at any point. Obama doubled down on it. And he supported the initial decision, anyway, for crying out loud, so I can't imagine how this defends his decisions or his judgment.
If your measure of success is "we have three automakers instead of just one," and that's the primary barometer you're using, then of course you consider it a success. But that's not a rational way to measure the success of the program.
Also, the companies in question would not disappear; they'd go through bankruptcy and emerge, just like countless other companies (yes, even very large ones) have.
That wasn't the belief at the time at all. Chrysler would not have emerged at all. It would have disappeared entirely and it was believed General Motors would have been so downsized its long time survival was highly doubtful.
And they haven't been, anyway, so we haven't averted that problem. Bankruptcy law exists to try to fairly structure and pay off debt. It is for exactly this sort of situation.
The problem, in a nutshell (insofar as it can be reduced to that size at all), is that we didn't stop there from being winners and losers, we just changed who the winners and losers were.
This really ought to be qualified. It's not just inherently good that they own more. What if you just randomly took 10% of every large company and gave it to their union? Would that be good? Or does it depend on how and why the union gets more control?
Ten percent probably would be good. It shouldn't be forced on the companies,but if they negotiate it willingly I think it would be a fine thing.
These "major concessions" were forced on them by necessity, which makes calling them "concessions" a misnomer. And it's their employment agreement and its dramatic overreach with pensions that caused the business to go bankrupt in the first place!
You are wrong. The pensions were a contributory problem that had to be addressed, but also just as important was the automakers were making cars the public didn't want to buy. The pricing of their cars was still competitive to the foreign car-makers, but the public didn't like them. They were losing market share. And the banking cries increased the problem. It would have been more manageable if suddenly sales didn't plunge and banks had stopped approving loans. The automaker bailout was directly tied to the bank meltdown. They were losing money before it, but the meltdown put them in crisis mode. The pension plans were agreed to in collective bargaining agreements. The unions didn't force management to make those agreements. It was done during better times and it wasn't thought the terms were onerous. You want to put everything on the big bad unions. It is more complex than that
So let's recap: they, through collective bargaining and various other means, secure ever-increasingly favorable benefits, pensions, and other entitlements. These are financially untenable in the long-term, but they get them anyway. Eventually, the "long term" becomes now, and the industry collapses, unable to support these agreements. The government steps in and uses taxpayer money to alter the standard bankruptcy process so that the unions control more of the company than they otherwise would have. They make necessary "concessions" to their untenable arrangement (without which they would all lose their jobs), and are praised for their willingness to negotiate. WHAT?
Triple the amounts and see if that makes the situation look ridiculous: if you negotiate a $1/million a year salary, and it's so untenable that your employer goes broke, are you really conceding anything when you accept less in order to keep your job? Clearly, no, because it is your exorbitant victory in negotiation that caused the crisis. Once this is established, the only point of contention should be whether or not union benefits were untenably high. If they were, then the rest of the argument falls apart.
This is starting to feel a lot like those situations where something is called good just because it benefits unions. That seems to be the default position for many.
I addressed this in my above comments. Your analysis is very simplistic and the results have been good for both management and the unions.You want to treat workers that are in a union as an adversary, an enemy that has to be put down.
Yeah, again, "getting our money back" is not considered a good investment in any other part of the business world. That this is a success is not a reflection of the wisdom of the policy, but of our collectively lowered expectations. Loaning money without interest is a failure.
Three other problems with this, though:
1) There is no fundamental reason why we need to have a thriving auto industry. Lots of places import cars and make other things of value. Cars are not magically tied to American economic growth or prosperity.
Are you really serious? Yes American prosperity is tied to the automaker industry. If two out of three of the major automakers went under it would have had a serious impact on employment. Not just the automakers would have been affected, but dealerships and many other companies that provide auto parts and other services to them. The auto industry is very important to the United States. Lots of other places don't make cars and never did, but we do and it matters here if the industry suddenly disappeared.
2) The American auto industry is not going to thrive if you bail out businesses that make poor decisions. It thrives when good decisions are rewarded and bad ones punished. Insulating a business from the results of their decisions blatantly hamstrings the competitive process.
It is not a good idea to do it regularly, but this was a unique situation triggered by the bank meltdown.
3) Even if I were to accept that getting our money back (and the ownership restructuring, etc.) makes the outcome a good one, that wouldn't necessarily validate the risk. If the government goes to Vegas and bets $500 billion on red and loses, and then wins it back by making the same bet, they've also "gotten all their money back." That doesn't mean it was a sound decision, or a risk worth taking.
And one more bonus argument, just for the heck of it: if the auto industry was worth saving, why did government have to come in and do it? Lots of other businesses go broke and get salvaged in some form by enterprising investors who recognize the opportunity it presents.
This wasn't a Vegas roll of the dice. There was stipulations and conditions put on the money and it turned out all the decisions were right ones.
Why did the government do it? Are you forgetting what the situation was? There were no enterprising investors because they get their money to invest from banking institutions and they weren't loaning out money.
That wasn't the belief at the time at all. Chrysler would not have emerged at all. It would have disappeared entirely and it was believed General Motors would have been so downsized its long time survival was highly doubtful.
Then it shouldn't. The process exists for a reason. It's not like we've never had big businesses fail before: we have procedures in place. Borders filed for bankruptcy, too. Why didn't the government save them? The answer is obvious: they don't have a union with political clout.
Also, the idea that the automakers wouldn't have survived bankruptcy does not in any way, shape, or form, explain why the unions were treated as higher priority lenders than they would have been under a normal bankruptcy. That was not in the least bit required to fend off what you're suggesting, and there's no reason to do it other than to pay them back for their political support. Even if you simply decide to accept that the government is obligated to save this specific industry (but not others, curiously), that still wouldn't explain why the government did not loan the funds and then allow the normal bankruptcy process to proceed. Except, of course, that doing that wouldn't benefit the unions.
Ten percent probably would be good. It shouldn't be forced on the companies,but if they negotiate it willingly I think it would be a fine thing.
But of course, it wasn't negotiated. Unions received elevated loan priority by fiat.
You are wrong. The pensions were a contributory problem that had to be addressed, but also just as important was the automakers were making cars the public didn't want to buy. The pricing of their cars was still competitive to the foreign car-makers, but the public didn't like them. They were losing market share. And the banking cries increased the problem. It would have been more manageable if suddenly sales didn't plunge and banks had stopped approving loans. The automaker bailout was directly tied to the bank meltdown. They were losing money before it, but the meltdown put them in crisis mode.
You're drawing a line that simply does not exist. There is no demarcation between costs that contribute to prices or expansion and costs that don't. Pensions factor into costs, and costs factor into prices.
It could not be less relevant that American cars were competitively priced with foreign cars, because as you point out, the public didn't like them as much. But that's okay...if you make up for that with lower prices. Products don't need to be the best of their kind to be wildly successful, they need to offer a good balance of cost to value. It's fine if foreign cars are superior, provided American cars are sufficiently cheaper to compensate for it.
As for the role of pensions: saying they were "contributory" is putting it mildly. GM, for example, had a "Jobs Bank" program that continued to pay wages and benefits at nearly the same level as active workers to workers who had lost their jobs as a result of plant closures OR increased automation in factories! That's stunning. They have to keep paying workers they replace with more efficient machines. :dizzy: Talk about discouraging innovation. You're hit with a penalty every time you increase productivity. That's mind-blowing.
The pension plans were agreed to in collective bargaining agreements. The unions didn't force management to make those agreements.
Except that the laws disproportionately favor unions in these negotiations. Laws have been chipping away at whatever neutrality there might once have been here for decades now.
And even if you want to ignore this and say that anything which comes out of collective bargaining negotiations is perfectly fine and fair and neutral, that still doesn't excuse bailing out the companies when they fail. The idea behind competition is simple: make decisions, respond to consequences. When you insulate an industry from consequences, you short-circuit that process. The businesses that fail are as much a part of the strength of capitalism as the ones that succeed. Success in industry is built out of failure, either directly or vicariously.
I addressed this in my above comments. Your analysis is very simplistic and the results have been good for both management and the unions.
How can it have been good for both management and unions when they had to be bailed out?
You want to treat workers that are in a union as an adversary, an enemy that has to be put down.
I treat the expectation of generous benefits and pensions as an enemy, because it is: it's the enemy of industry, particularly when the government assists in perpetuating it. I treat political giveaways to unions as the enemy, because it's patently unfair to both the businesses and non-union workers.
Are you really serious? Yes American prosperity is tied to the automaker industry. If two out of three of the major automakers went under it would have had a serious impact on employment. Not just the automakers would have been affected, but dealerships and many other companies that provide auto parts and other services to them. The auto industry is very important to the United States. Lots of other places don't make cars and never did, but we do and it matters here if the industry suddenly disappeared.
I don't think you're getting what I'm saying here. We don't have to make cars to succeed. We really don't. I can't even imagine how one could argue otherwise. Some places make cars and import CD players. Some places make CD players and import cars. There is absolutely nothing magical or essential about making our own cars. If someone is better than us at making cars, and we're better at information technology, then not only is that a better use of our society's time, but it's going to be inevitable that we end up doing that, anyway. It is only avoided by government basically subsidizing an industry, either by paying it directly or assuming its risk. Economically, it makes zero sense, and is done for purely political reasons.
Trying to argue that the auto industry is important because other people provide auto parts to them makes even less sense, and betrays a stunningly superficial view of economics. The argument applies every bit as much to horses and buggies as it does to cars. If money is not invested in car companies and car factories, it will be invested elsewhere, and those industries will have people selling to them, and everyone will make the same mistake of thinking "we can't live without X industry." Ignoring the fact that, if X industry were so crucial and beneficial, it wouldn't need saving to begin with.
We are not doomed without an auto industry any more than we were doomed without a thriving bicycle industry, or a thriving LCD monitor industry. We do different things over time, and there is no one industry or type of product that America must make themselves. We must do things of value for the rest of the world. Those things are not hardwired into us, them, or the world in general. They can and will fluctuate, and in a healthy economy, they do. There is literally no economic basis or broad societal benefit to clinging to the nostalgia of a particular industry.
It is not a good idea to do it regularly, but this was a unique situation triggered by the bank meltdown.
It's a bad idea both in small doses and in larger ones (not that I really expect the government to draw that line in the right place, anyway; "too big to fail" is either a solid principle or not, and if it is, it will lead to more bailouts in the future). There is no line at which you suddenly start hampering the competititve process of markets. You hamper it immediately. Perhaps not catastrophically, but it doesn't cease to have an effect because you only did it a few times. Particularly when it's this large and this high-profile.
The precedent is clear: the government will have the back of large, politically-connected industries.
This wasn't a Vegas roll of the dice. There was stipulations and conditions put on the money and it turned out all the decisions were right ones.
None of those stipulations or conditions change the fundamental risk. Having to map out how they're going to spend their money doesn't put some new special constraint on them, or guarantee that they'll handle it well, it just means they can't run off with it or fail to make a legitimate attempt at reviving their businesses. That's well below private lending standards and, appropriately enough, it was loaned out at half the price the market would otherwise bear.
But the point of the analogy is that your stated defense--"we got the money back, so it was worth it"--completely ignores risk. Obviously, loaning this money is not as risky as flipping a coin or rolling some dice, but it did have risk and that risk matters. Risking taxpayer money doesn't magically become okay if they happen to get it back.
Which they didn't, entirely, by the way. We got the money back from the bridge loan, but that's not all of it. And it also doesn't include the $13-14 billion in missed taxes that would otherwise have been paid. It was wrong a dozen different ways.
Why did the government do it? Are you forgetting what the situation was? There were no enterprising investors because they get their money to invest from banking institutions and they weren't loaning out money.
Except that they actually did have a rough bidding process where private entities had the opportunity to match the government's initial loan. But guess what? The bids didn't count unless they offered the same favorable terms to unions that the government was offering. That really says it all.
Throw in the fact, by the way, that "Victims of defective GM and Chrysler cars waiting to be paid damages weren't so fortunate—they'll end up getting nothing or next to nothing."
But wait: it gets worse. They can't even make the absurd argument that they had to step in to save ordinary folks from the perils of the tumult, because they specifically favored unionized workers over non-union ones (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/23/business/la-fi-gm-bailout-review-20110623). 20,000 non-union Delphi employees saw their pensions slashed. They're now appealing to Congress (http://heraldbulletin.com/business/x925649389/Delphi-salary-retirees-benefits-slashed) (and suing, even, I believe) for the same kinds of considerations their more politically powerful co-workers received.
That is terrible, no matter what you believe.
And it should go without saying that if private lenders aren't lending, that's your problem, and that's what you fix. If a screw in your deck comes loose, you fix it, you don't start recruiting people to stand at each corner and artificially prop it up.
will.15
08-25-11, 10:32 PM
Here is another reason why the private sector is no substitute for government when it comes to helping the needy:
http://www.aolnews.com/story/ap-impact-some-911-charities-failed/1909889/
will.15
08-25-11, 11:17 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by will.15 http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=746693#post746693)
That wasn't the belief at the time at all. Chrysler would not have emerged at all. It would have disappeared entirely and it was believed General Motors would have been so downsized its long time survival was highly doubtful.
Then it shouldn't. The process exists for a reason. It's not like we've never had big businesses fail before: we have procedures in place. Borders filed for bankruptcy, too. Why didn't the government save them? The answer is obvious: they don't have a union with political clout.
Also, the idea that the automakers wouldn't have survived bankruptcy does not in any way, shape, or form, explain why the unions were treated as higher priority lenders than they would have been under a normal bankruptcy. That was not in the least bit required to fend off what you're suggesting, and there's no reason to do it other than to pay them back for their political support. Even if you simply decide to accept that the government is obligated to save this specific industry (but not others, curiously), that still wouldn't explain why the government did not loan the funds and then allow the normal bankruptcy process to proceed. Except, of course, that doing that wouldn't benefit the unions.
Because bankruptcy itself would have crippled the companies. It wasn't political clout that saved the automakers and not Borders. Borders is just a bookstore. it has a marginal impact on the economy. They just sell books, they don't publish them
.
Quote:
Originally Posted by will.15 http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=746693#post746693)
Ten percent probably would be good. It shouldn't be forced on the companies,but if they negotiate it willingly I think it would be a fine thing.
But of course, it wasn't negotiated. Unions received elevated loan priority by fiat.
It was negotiated. The federal givernment didn't dictate terms, but the companies had to negotiate with the unions if they didn't declare bankruptcy first and they were trying to avoid bankruptcy and get federal bailout money.
Quote:
Originally Posted by will.15 http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=746693#post746693)
You are wrong. The pensions were a contributory problem that had to be addressed, but also just as important was the automakers were making cars the public didn't want to buy. The pricing of their cars was still competitive to the foreign car-makers, but the public didn't like them. They were losing market share. And the banking cries increased the problem. It would have been more manageable if suddenly sales didn't plunge and banks had stopped approving loans. The automaker bailout was directly tied to the bank meltdown. They were losing money before it, but the meltdown put them in crisis mode.
You're drawing a line that simply does not exist. There is no demarcation between costs that contribute to prices or expansion and costs that don't. Pensions factor into costs, and costs factor into prices.
It could not be less relevant that American cars were competitively priced with foreign cars, because as you point out, the public didn't like them as much. But that's okay...if you make up for that with lower prices. Products don't need to be the best of their kind to be wildly successful, they need to offer a good balance of cost to value. It's fine if foreign cars are superior, provided American cars are sufficiently cheaper to compensate for it.
Except cheap cars don't survive if they suck. I got a Hyundai in the early days. What a horrible car that wasn't worth the low cost and I understand they make them better now and they are not as cheap either. The Yugo was a cheap car, very cheap, they sucked, and are no longer around.
As for the role of pensions: saying they were "contributory" is putting it mildly. GM, for example, had a "Jobs Bank" program that continued to pay wages and benefits at nearly the same level as active workers to workers who had lost their jobs as a result of plant closures OR increased automation in factories! That's stunning. They have to keep paying workers they replace with more efficient machines. :dizzy: Talk about discouraging innovation. You're hit with a penalty every time you increase productivity. That's mind-blowing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by will.15 http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=746693#post746693)
The pension plans were agreed to in collective bargaining agreements. The unions didn't force management to make those agreements.
Except that the laws disproportionately favor unions in these negotiations. Laws have been chipping away at whatever neutrality there might once have been here for decades now.
I have no idea what you mean. The law protects the right for unions to exist. I am not aware of any laws that protects them in negotiations or specific laws that tilt government toward unions more than in the recent past. If anything the pro business Supreme Court has tilted the other way.
And even if you want to ignore this and say that anything which comes out of collective bargaining negotiations is perfectly fine and fair and neutral, that still doesn't excuse bailing out the companies when they fail. The idea behind competition is simple: make decisions, respond to consequences. When you insulate an industry from consequences, you short-circuit that process. The businesses that fail are as much a part of the strength of capitalism as the ones that succeed. Success in industry is built out of failure, either directly or vicariously.
Again, the situation was accelerated due to the banking collapse. And if the problem was entirely due to the terrible unions, why was Ford in better shape? They had the same collective bargaining agreements and did not need federal fund bailouts. And the reason for bailing them out was for the same reason the banks were bailed out, failure on such a massive scale and at the same time would have been catastrophoc for the economy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by will.15 http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=746693#post746693)
I addressed this in my above comments. Your analysis is very simplistic and the results have been good for both management and the unions.
How can it have been good for both management and unions when they had to be bailed out?
It was good that they were bailed out because it was better than the altrnative and the operation prescribed by government was a success, the patient lived and is thriving. It was an incredible success story.
Quote:
Originally Posted by will.15 http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=746693#post746693)
You want to treat workers that are in a union as an adversary, an enemy that has to be put down.
I treat the expectation of generous benefits and pensions as an enemy, because it is: it's the enemy of industry, particularly when the government assists in perpetuating it. I treat political giveaways to unions as the enemy, because it's patently unfair to both the businesses and non-union workers.
The government did not perpetuate it in any way. They didn't negotiate it. The generous pensions no longer exist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by will.15 http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=746693#post746693)
Are you really serious? Yes American prosperity is tied to the automaker industry. If two out of three of the major automakers went under it would have had a serious impact on employment. Not just the automakers would have been affected, but dealerships and many other companies that provide auto parts and other services to them. The auto industry is very important to the United States. Lots of other places don't make cars and never did, but we do and it matters here if the industry suddenly disappeared.
I don't think you're getting what I'm saying here. We don't have to make cars to succeed. We really don't. I can't even imagine how one could argue otherwise. Some places make cars and import CD players. Some places make CD players and import cars. There is absolutely nothing magical or essential about making our own cars. If someone is better than us at making cars, and we're better at information technology, then not only is that a better use of our society's time, but it's going to be inevitable that we end up doing that, anyway. It is only avoided by government basically subsidizing an industry, either by paying it directly or assuming its risk. Economically, it makes zero sense, and is done for purely political reasons.
We don't need to build car to survive in the very long run. But it would have had a devastating negative impact for two out of three automakers to suddenly disappear during a serious economic downturn. You're comparing manufacturing cars with CD players? It would not have been just the automakers affected. 9.1 unemployment currently? It would be a lot worse than that and you would blame Obama and the Democrats for it.
Trying to argue that the auto industry is important because other people provide auto parts to them makes even less sense, and betrays a stunningly superficial view of economics. The argument applies every bit as much to horses and buggies as it does to cars. If money is not invested in car companies and car factories, it will be invested elsewhere, and those industries will have people selling to them, and everyone will make the same mistake of thinking "we can't live without X industry." Ignoring the fact that, if X industry were so crucial and beneficial, it wouldn't need saving to begin with.
You gotta be kidding me. You are comparing an evolutionary process with one industry overtaking another one and that is entirely different. Horse and buggy was replaced by cars. Horses are no longer on the roads and blacksmiths went the way of the dodo bird. You are comparing that with the sudden disappearance of American automakers during an economic meltdown? The auto industry transformed America and added much more jobs than it replaced. See all those paved streets and highways? We didn't need that for the horse and buggy. My superficial analysis about how important the auto industry is to the American economy.is the same, done by them more articulately, most economists were making.
We are not doomed without an auto industry any more than we were doomed without a thriving bicycle industry, or a thriving LCD monitor industry. We do different things over time, and there is no one industry or type of product that America must make themselves. We must do things of value for the rest of the world. Those things are not hardwired into us, them, or the world in general. They can and will fluctuate, and in a healthy economy, they do. There is literally no economic basis or broad societal benefit to clinging to the nostalgia of a particular industry.
.
Quote:
Originally Posted by will.15 http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=746693#post746693)
It is not a good idea to do it regularly, but this was a unique situation triggered by the bank meltdown.
It's a bad idea both in small doses and in larger ones (not that I really expect the government to draw that line in the right place, anyway; "too big to fail" is either a solid principle or not, and if it is, it will lead to more bailouts in the future). There is no line at which you suddenly start hampering the competitive process of markets. You hamper it immediately. Perhaps not catastrophically, but it doesn't cease to have an effect because you only did it a few times. Particularly when it's this large and this high-profile.
The precedent is clear: the government will have the back of large, politically-connected industries.
No, it won't, the exception is the defense industry, but they already receive federal subsidies anyway by their close proximity and dependance on government.
I can't think of any other industry government would bail out. Certainly not movie studios or any of the commercial airlines.
Quote:
Originally Posted by will.15 http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=746693#post746693)
This wasn't a Vegas roll of the dice. There was stipulations and conditions put on the money and it turned out all the decisions were right ones.
None of those stipulations or conditions change the fundamental risk. Having to map out how they're going to spend their money doesn't put some new special constraint on them, or guarantee that they'll handle it well, it just means they can't run off with it or fail to make a legitimate attempt at reviving their businesses. That's well below private lending standards and, appropriately enough, it was loaned out at half the price the market would otherwise bear.
But the point of the analogy is that your stated defense--"we got the money back, so it was worth it"--completely ignores risk. Obviously, loaning this money is not as risky as flipping a coin or rolling some dice, but it did have risk and that risk matters. Risking taxpayer money doesn't magically become okay if they happen to get it back.
Which they didn't, entirely, by the way. We got the money back from the bridge loan, but that's not all of it. And it also doesn't include the $13-14 billion in missed taxes that would otherwise have been paid. It was wrong a dozen different ways.
It saved the industry. I don't have the figures in front of me but the auto industry is the most single important one in this country and was thought so important to save the initial proposal came from the Bush Administration.
Quote:
Originally Posted by will.15 http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=746693#post746693)
Why did the government do it? Are you forgetting what the situation was? There were no enterprising investors because they get their money to invest from banking institutions and they weren't loaning out money.
Except that they actually did have a rough bidding process where private entities had the opportunity to match the government's initial loan. But guess what? The bids didn't count unless they offered the same favorable terms to unions that the government was offering. That really says it all.
I don't know anything about that except it was widely reported there was no interest in bidding on the automakers until they went through a bankruptcy and typically that would mean a bid based on using the company itself as collateral, which would mean selling off big parts of it to finance the debt. Very often in these instances it means the winner makes a profit selling off the land and other assets and the company itself disappears as a manufacturing entity.
Throw in the fact, by the way, that "Victims of defective GM and Chrysler cars waiting to be paid damages weren't so fortunate—they'll end up getting nothing or next to nothing."
Oh, the winners of expensive class action lawsuits where the real winners are the lawyers who initiated it get shortchanged? Boo-hoo.
But wait: it gets worse. They can't even make the absurd argument that they had to step in to save ordinary folks from the perils of the tumult, because they specifically favored unionized workers over non-union ones (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/23/business/la-fi-gm-bailout-review-20110623). 20,000 non-union Delphi employees saw their pensions slashed. They're now appealing to Congress (http://heraldbulletin.com/business/x925649389/Delphi-salary-retirees-benefits-slashed) (and suing, even, I believe) for the same kinds of considerations their more politically powerful co-workers received.
Those Delphi employees would be in a lot worse shape, many if not most would be out of a job, if GM and Chrysler went under. One wasn't favored over the other because Delphi is not an automaker. Their appeals to Congress will go nowhere with the economy as it is and the lawsuit if there is one will just make money for the lawyers involve.
That is terrible, no matter what you believe.
I don't think it is terrible at all. Unions had bargaining power because they had legal bargaining agreements. If employees choose not to participate in a union, then guess what, they have no direct influence over management. That's how it goes.
And it should go without saying that if private lenders aren't lending, that's your problem, and that's what you fix. If a screw in your deck comes loose, you fix it, you don't start recruiting people to stand at each corner and artificially prop it up
The automakers were bailed out because both the Bush and Obama Administrations thought they were too important to fail so suddenly in an economic meltdown. And the Obama Admn. put conditions on the money that had a lot to do with the investment being a success.
Because bankruptcy itself would have crippled the companies. It wasn't political clout that saved the automakers and not Borders. Borders is just a bookstore. it has a marginal impact on the economy. They just sell books, they don't publish them
And it would cost less to bail them, too. Explain the difference to be between, say, bailing out one large industry or several smaller ones that add to a similar number of jobs? The answer, again: because jobs that are "spread out" like that do not have collective political clout. I'm not sure why you think "it wasn't political clout that saved the automakers" is an argument. Given the terms of the bailout that I explained in significant detail, it clearly was. There's no other logical explanation. And once you've posited that it's not only a good thing for government to bail out business but that it should do so, there's no demarcation that would explain why it's good to bail out the automakers but not another industry. Industries with marginal "impact" (though I'll bet anything the logic behind that claim is terribly broken) will also have marginal bailout costs, relatively speaking. If the government's job is to save jobs in dying industries, there's no basis from which to exclude them.
There are only a few possibilities here, Will, and none of them speak well of the government's decision. Either the automakers had become completely incapable of running a profitable business, in which case "saving" them is just delaying their death for political reasons, or they were still capable of reforming and running a business, in which case there's no reason private investors couldn't recognize this and make the investment themselves.
See the quote two down from this one for more on this balancing act.
It was negotiated. The federal givernment didn't dictate terms, but the companies had to negotiate with the unions if they didn't declare bankruptcy first and they were trying to avoid bankruptcy and get federal bailout money.
Yes, the government did dictate many terms. You made the exact same point yourself earlier in the discussion when you described the qualifications attached to the bailout, and I provided another example of it when I pointed out that the government required any private bidder to duplicate the union-friendly terms. The idea that this was just a normal negotiation with the government looking idly on is crazy talk.
Except cheap cars don't survive if they suck. I got a Hyundai in the early days. What a horrible car that wasn't worth the low cost and I understand they make them better now and they are not as cheap either. The Yugo was a cheap car, very cheap, they sucked, and are no longer around.
I feel like you've lost track of what it is you're supposed to be arguing. There are only two possibilities:
1) American car manufacturers' were not making competitive cars for their price, but they were not making total piles of crap like Yugos. They were making decent cars that just cost too much relative to their quality. Which means my point about cost and price still stands.
2) American car manufacterers' were making super crappy cars like Yugos, which means by extention you think we should have bailed out Yugo.
You really need to step back and think about all this, because you're trying to posit some weird situation where American cars suck, yet American car manufacturers' are totally redeemable. AND a situation where they're worth saving but NOT worth saving enough for private business to save. The combination of things you're arguing are colliding with each other.
Again, the situation was accelerated due to the banking collapse. And if the problem was entirely due to the terrible unions, why was Ford in better shape? They had the same collective bargaining agreements and did not need federal fund bailouts.
I didn't say it was entirely due to the unions. I said they played a major role, I listed specific examples of extreme benefits, and then I made some basic points about how competition works. You're ignoring like 9/10ths of each quote that you reply to at this point.
Also, from what basis are you claiming that Ford's collective bargaining agreement was identical to the other automakers? There's no way that's true.
It was good that they were bailed out because it was better than the altrnative and the operation prescribed by government was a success, the patient lived and is thriving. It was an incredible success story.
Again, I think you've lost track of what we were discussing. We were talking about the process of collective bargaining, not the bailouts. You said the result of this bargaining has been "good for both management and unions." So my question was (and still is): "How can it have been good for both management and unions when they had to be bailed out?"
We don't need to build car to survive in the very long run. But it would have had a devastating negative impact for two out of three automakers to suddenly disappear during a serious economic downturn. You're comparing manufacturing cars with CD players? It would not have been just the automakers affected. 9.1 unemployment currently? It would be a lot worse than that and you would blame Obama and the Democrats for it.
And what happens to the money spent on and for these businesses? Think beyond first causes. Think about the influx of capital into the market. Think about the remaining automakers swooping in to buy them at a discount and expand. You talk about a business failing like it's never happened before, or as if a fluid economy has no way of accounting for it.
Will it be perfect and instant? No, but the government cannot completely protect the economy from change, and trying to do so is often what exacerbates and lengthens the period of transition to begin with. Short-term solutions breed long-term problems.
The government picking winners and losers overrides the most basic mechanics of capitalism and competition, the point of which is to reward sound decisions and punish bad ones. This does not become less true, less valuable, or less important if an industry grows to a certain size, and the American automakers do not occupy some special role at the center of the economy that must be protected by the government, either.
You gotta be kidding me. You are comparing an evolutionary process with one industry overtaking another one and that is entirely different. Horse and buggy was replaced by cars. We had less horses on the road and blacksmiths went the way of the dodo bird. You are comparing that with the sudden disappearance of American automakers during an economic meltdown? The auto industry transformed America and added much more jobs than it replaced. See all those paved streets and highways? We didn't need that for the horse and buggy.
We don't need to replace cars, we need to replace making cars. We need to make something else, or do something else. Here, I'll repeat the relevant part of what I said before:
"If money is not invested in car companies and car factories, it will be invested elsewhere, and those industries will have people selling to them, and everyone will make the same mistake of thinking "we can't live without X industry." Ignoring the fact that, if X industry were so crucial and beneficial, it wouldn't need saving to begin with."
Of course we still need cars. We just don't need to be the ones making them.
I can't think of any other industry government would bail out. Certainly not movie studios or any of the airlines.
We have bailed out airlines as recently as 2001. And if you can't think of other industries they'd bail out, it's because their unions simply aren't powerful enough.
Either way, you've missed the point: it was not that this is going to lead to some rash of bailouts (though the precedent definitely worries me). The point is that the bailout went to a politically-connected industry with terms incredibly favorable to the unions in that industry.
It saved the industry. I don't have the figures in front of me but the auto industry is the most single important one in this country and was thought so important to save the initial proposal came from the Bush Administration.
1) You're defining "important" as...what? Most raw number of employees?
2) I don't care if Bush proposed it. You say that like I'm going to back anything that he was for.
3) You didn't respond to what I said at all, which was:
"None of those stipulations or conditions change the fundamental risk. Having to map out how they're going to spend their money doesn't put some new special constraint on them, or guarantee that they'll handle it well, it just means they can't run off with it or fail to make a legitimate attempt at reviving their businesses. That's well below private lending standards and, appropriately enough, it was loaned out at half the price the market would otherwise bear.
But the point of the analogy is that your stated defense--"we got the money back, so it was worth it"--completely ignores risk. Obviously, loaning this money is not as risky as flipping a coin or rolling some dice, but it did have risk and that risk matters. Risking taxpayer money doesn't magically become okay if they happen to get it back.
Which they didn't, entirely, by the way. We got the money back from the bridge loan, but that's not all of it. And it also doesn't include the $13-14 billion in missed taxes that would otherwise have been paid. It was wrong a dozen different ways."
I don't get it. Why reply at all if you're just going to ignore the argument?
I don't know anything about that except it was widely reported there was no interest in bidding on the automakers until they went through a bankruptcy and typically that would mean a bid based on using the company itself as collateral, which would mean selling off big parts of it to finance the debt. Very often in these instances it means the winner makes a profit selling off the land and other assets and the company itself disappears as a manufacturing entity.
Well, now you do know something about it: you know that the government stipulated that private bidders must duplicate the union-friendly disbursement of financial control that the government was offering them. Please provide a purpose for doing this that does not constitute a political giveaway to unions.
Oh, the winners of expensive class action lawsuits where the real winners are the lawyers who initiated it get shortchanged? Boo-hoo.
I didn't say they were class-action lawsuits, I said all lawsuits, period. And while I dislike most of them myself, you can't dismiss this all sight-unseen. Unless you believe the government personally examined each and concluded they were all frivolous, then it was simply unfair that union giveaways took precedence over this.
Those Delphi employees would be in a lot worse shape, many if not most would be out of a job, if GM and Chrysler went under.
Irrelevant. You're not only defending the existence of a bailout, you're defending the specifics of the bailout. My argument has been two-pronged: first, that we shouldn't have bailed them out, and second, that even if we were going to we shouldn't have used it to provide political favors to unions. The statement above has nothing to do with that second point, which was the point being made.
One wasn't favored over the other because Delphi is not an automaker.
This proves that you didn't even read the link. It's not that they favored the actual automaker unions over the Delph, the parts-supplier, it's that they specifically favored union employees of Delphi over non-union ones.
I don't think it is terrible at all. Unions had bargaining power because they had legal bargaining agreements. If employees choose not to participate in a union, then guess what, they have no direct influence over management. That's how it goes.
Except it wasn't just a negotiation with management. And the lack of a legal bargaining agreement means zilch, because the entire point is that the government overrode existing agreements. The government simply declared that it was going to restructure the automakers, and it did this in a way that benefitted unions over management AND union workers far more than non-union workers. That's not defensible, as evidenced by the fact that you've now tossed out two total non-sequiturs in response.
The automakers were bailed out because both the Bush and Obama Administrations thought they were too important to fail so suddenly in an economic meltdown. And the Obama Admn. put conditions on the money that had a lot to do with the investment being a success.
This in no way, shape, or form, constitutes a rebuttal to what I said, which was this:
"And it should go without saying that if private lenders aren't lending, that's your problem, and that's what you fix. If a screw in your deck comes loose, you fix it, you don't start recruiting people to stand at each corner and artificially prop it up."
will.15
03-09-12, 12:13 PM
EDIT: this post is a reply to this post (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=796830) in another thread, moved here after the fact.
The governemnt invested in General Motors and Chrylser for political reasons and it was a huge success.
One size doesn't fit all. Sometimes government makes bad decisions. Guess what? So does business. Not all investments work out.
The governemnt invested in General Motors and Chrylser for political reasons and it was a huge success.
No it wasn't (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=759601). It was a huge political giveaway. This is not even close to arguable, and I'm amazed that you can, with a straight face, keep repeating this line.
One size doesn't fit all. Sometimes government makes bad decisions. Guess what? So does business. Not all investments work out.
It sounds like you're trying to draw some clumsy equivalence, but there isn't any. For one, when a business investment doesn't work out, the people who lose out were those who agreed to take the risk. It's voluntary and specifically chosen. When a government investment fails, the risk is socialized and many of the "investors" often had little awareness or say in the specific decision.
For another, there are less direct lines of incentive and consequence in government; they are further removed from the consequences than actual investors. You can't talk your way out of an economic reality, but you can absolutely talk your way out of a failed policy.
For yet another, they're more likely to fail not just because of the first two points (though both are reason enough to dislike the idea), but also because they almost invariably have no working knowledge of the industry they're diving into. People who invest in new energies, for example, are generally people who have worked in the energy industry.
And since we're on the topic, the phrase "one size doesn't fit all" suggests to me that you don't understand the actual argument, because the market-oriented ideals are not even remotely "one size fits all." They are the exact opposite: they're saying that there are all sorts of possibilities and bits of information spread out, and that a lone entity like government cannot possibly hope to encompass and contain them in a way that would allow it to supersede private decisions. The argument about markets is not consolidated, it's democratized, because "the market" is not one agent, it's the name given to trillions of independent decisions.
You do a lot of arguing against these ideas, but I often see pretty clear indications that you don't really "get" them.
will.15
03-09-12, 12:50 PM
You can argue until you are blue in the face the bailout of the auto industry was not a huge success, but the reality is it was. Romney's opposition to it was a big reason Michigan was a squeaker for him, even many Republicans over there supported it, it was hugely popular there. The United States auto industry is doing well, better than they have for years. While the economy was in a slump, they were doing better than when the economy was thriving and now are in solid shape. Without the bailout, only Ford would still be standing.
You can argue until you are blue in the face the bailout of the auto industry was not a huge success, but the reality is it was.
No it wasn't (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=759601). Do you get some kind of prize if you regurgitate the administration's talking point a certain number of times?
Last time we discussed this (at the link above) you backed yourself into, like, five different corners. Which seems impossible, unless you're in some weird pentagon-shaped room. So I say: defend the claim or stop making it. And I say that because I'm certain you can't do the former.
will.15
03-09-12, 01:04 PM
Yes it was and the Economist, hardly liberal, agrees:
Mitt Romney and the car industry
A Detroiter in his own mind
Feb 14th 2012, 21:31 by R.M. | WASHINGTON, DC
ONE of Mitt Romney's problems is that he lays it on too thick. He's not just a conservative, he's a "severe conservative". He feels your pain because he too is "unemployed". And he understands America's car industry because he's a Tigers-cheering motorhead, a true "son of Detroit".
That last assertion comes in an op-ed (http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120214/OPINION01/202140336/Romney-op-ed--%20%20Taxpayers-should-get-GM-shares%E2%80%99-proceeds?wpisrc=nl_fix) Mr Romney wrote for the Detroit News today. And it's not untrue, per se. The candidate was born in Detroit, though he grew up in Bloomfield Hills (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomfield_Hills,_Michigan), one of America's wealthiest cities. He probably cheered for the Tigers as a kid, but his position has since evolved (http://powerwall.msnbc.msn.com/politics/jock-the-vote-10403.gallery? photoId=34107). And cars may really be "in my bones", as he claims, but he advocated letting Detroit go bankrupt (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html) in 2008.
The purpose of Mr Romney's op-ed is to clarify his position on the auto bail-out ahead of Michigan's primary on February 28th. And the piece rivals Cirque du Soleil in its display of contortions. Mr Romney seems loth to gush about the success of the bail-out, noting only the good news that "Chrysler and General Motors are still in business". He certainly doesn't mention that 2011 was the best year for America's carmakers since the financial crisis, with each of the big three turning a solid profit. But he does imply that this achievement is a result of his own advice. "The course I recommended was eventually followed", Mr Romney writes.
As with much of Mr Romney's excessive rhetoric, there is some truth to this statement. Following the bail-outs, the president eventually forced Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy, a step Mr Romney thought should occur naturally. And the government oversaw painful restructurings at both companies, which were largely in line with Mr Romney's broad suggestions. But the course Mr Romney recommended in 2008 began with the government stepping back, and it is unlikely things would've turned out so well had this happened.
Free-marketeers that we are, The Economist agreed with Mr Romney at the time. But we later apologised for that position (http://www.economist.com/node/16846494). "Had the government not stepped in, GM might have restructured under normal bankruptcy procedures, without putting public money at risk", we said. But "given the panic that gripped private purse-strings...it is more likely that GM would have been liquidated, sending a cascade of destruction through the supply chain on which its rivals, too, depended." Even Ford, which avoided bankruptcy, feared the industry would collapse if GM went down. At the time that seemed like a real possibility. The credit markets were bone-dry, making the privately financed bankruptcy that Mr Romney favoured improbable. He conveniently ignores this bit of history in claiming to have been right all along.
In other areas of his op-ed Mr Romney is more accurate. Unions did win some special favours in the bail-out deals, though they are not as egregious as the candidate claims. For example, a health fund for retired workers was unfairly favoured over secured bondholders at Chrysler. But an issue like that is unlikely to resonate in Detroit. So Mr Romney must find a way to re-write history, lest he fall further behind (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/mi/michigan_republican_presidential_primary-1589.html) Rick Santorum in his state of birth. Mr Santorum didn't support the auto bail-out either, but he evinces a genuine compassion for blue-collar workers. And he didn't pen an op-ed predicting, "If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye." That's a difficult statement to walk back.
will.15
03-09-12, 01:10 PM
Here is their apoolgy to Obama referenced in their lnk, a fair, non-ideolgical analysis:
General Motors
Government Motors no more
An apology is due to Barack Obama: his takeover of GM could have gone horribly wrong, but it has not
Aug 19th 2010 | from the print edition
http://media.economist.com/images/images-magazine/2010/34/ld/201034ldc144.gif
AMERICANS expect much from their president, but they do not think he should run car companies. Fortunately, Barack Obama agrees. This week the American government moved closer to getting rid of its stake in General Motors (GM) when the recently ex-bankrupt firm filed to offer its shares once more to the public (see article (http://www.economist.com/node/16846514)).
Once a symbol of American prosperity, GM collapsed into the government’s arms last summer. Years of poor management and grabby unions had left it in wretched shape. Efforts to reform came too late. When the recession hit, demand for cars plummeted. GM was on the verge of running out of cash when Uncle Sam intervened, throwing the firm a lifeline of $50 billion in exchange for 61% of its shares.
Many people thought this bail-out (and a smaller one involving Chrysler, an even sicker firm) unwise. Governments have historically been lousy stewards of industry. Lovers of free markets (including The Economist) feared that Mr Obama might use GM as a political tool: perhaps favouring the unions who donate to Democrats or forcing the firm to build smaller, greener cars than consumers want to buy. The label “Government Motors” quickly stuck, evoking images of clunky committee-built cars that burned banknotes instead of petrol—all run by what Sarah Palin might call the socialist-in-chief.
Yet the doomsayers were wrong. Unlike, say, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, who used public funds to support Renault and Peugeot-Citroën on condition that they did not close factories in France, Mr Obama has been tough from the start. GM had to promise to slim down dramatically—cutting jobs, shuttering factories and shedding brands—to win its lifeline. The firm was forced to declare bankruptcy. Shareholders were wiped out. Top managers were swept aside. Unions did win some special favours: when Chrysler was divided among its creditors, for example, a union health fund did far better than secured bondholders whose claims should have been senior. Congress has put pressure on GM to build new models in America rather than Asia, and to keep open dealerships in certain electoral districts. But by and large Mr Obama has not used his stakes in GM and Chrysler for political ends. On the contrary, his goal has been to restore both firms to health and then get out as quickly as possible. GM is now profitable again and Chrysler, managed by Fiat, is making progress. Taxpayers might even turn a profit when GM is sold.
So was the auto bail-out a success? It is hard to be sure. Had the government not stepped in, GM might have restructured under normal bankruptcy procedures, without putting public money at risk. Many observers think this unlikely, however. Given the panic that gripped private purse-strings last year, it is more likely that GM would have been liquidated, sending a cascade of destruction through the supply chain on which its rivals, too, depended. As for moral hazard, the expectation of future bail-outs may prompt managers and unions in other industries to behave rashly. But all the stakeholders suffered during GM’s bankruptcy, so this effect may be small.
Socialists don’t privatise
That does not mean, however, that bail-outs are always or often justified. Straightforward bankruptcy is usually the most efficient way to allow floundering firms to restructure or fail. The state should step in only when a firm’s collapse poses a systemic risk. Propping up the financial system in 2008 clearly qualified. Saving GM was a harder call, but, with the benefit of hindsight, the right one. The lesson for governments is that for a bail-out to work, it must be brutal and temporary. The lesson for American voters is that their president, for all his flaws, has no desire to own the commanding heights of industry. A gambler, yes. An interventionist, yes. A socialist, no.
I don't know why you think finding and linking to people who agree with you is an argument. That (constant) problem aside, this doesn't answer the overwhelming majority of what I asked you (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=759601). You'll also have noted, I hope, that in "apology" op-ed they say things like "So was the auto bail-out a success? It is hard to be sure," which is a good deal more qualified than the "huge success" you keep talking about. They also call the President a "gambler" -- which dovetails so well with my gambling analogy in the other thread (an analogy you disliked) that it's almost funny.
Also, the op-ed you just produced concedes the point about special favors for the unions, which you adamantly denied in the other thread. All it says is that Romney made it sound worse than it was, and that it won't help him politically, neither of which has anything to do with what I said.
So, in the process of trying to support your argument, you've a) not made an actual argument, but just pointed to someone who agrees with you, and b) contradicted two of your own positions. Well done.
will.15
03-09-12, 01:58 PM
I don't know why you think finding and linking to people who agree with you is an argument. That (constant) problem aside, this doesn't answer the overwhelming majority of what I asked you (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=759601). You'll also have noted, I hope, that in "apology" op-ed they say things like "So was the auto bail-out a success? It is hard to be sure," which is a good deal more qualified than the "huge success" you keep talking about. They also call the President a "gambler" -- which dovetails so well with my gambling analogy in the other thread (an analogy you disliked) that it's almost funny.
Also, the op-ed you just produced concedes the point about special favors for the unions, which you adamantly denied in the other thread. All it says is that Romney made it sound worse than it was, and that it won't help him politically, neither of which has anything to do with what I said.
So, in the process of trying to support your argument, you've a) not made an actual argument, but just pointed to someone who agrees with you, and b) contradicted two of your own positions. Well done.
The Economist is a conservative, free market publication. Citing them is a pretty powerful repudiation of your position, which is based on ideological opposition, not based on examining the actual results.
They said in an op ed piece two years ago it wasn't clear it was a success, the article two years later is less ambiguous. This is not a liberal publication. It is a free market one.
I didn't quote them because they agreed with me. I cited a prestigious publication with a free market approach which found the Obama administration helped save the auto industry. This no longer a purely ideological argument because the results of the Obama approach is there and The Economist, which is not ideologically predisposed to government intervention, admitted they were wrong.
They said some concessions were made to unions. It didn't regard it as a complete sell-out, which was your position. I never said the government didn't make concessions to the unions either. Obviously they did. But the Unions made concessions as well. They contrasted Obama's approach to France, and found that conservative government's approach inferior to the Obama approach, which according to them France's was purely political and Obama's wasn't.
I am not going to answer arguments you make in old links because I already answered them. If you think I haven't you can argue them again.
This is really a dead issue at this point. The liberals won one.The proof is General Motors and Chrysler are still here and doing better than they have for a long time. Government intervention worked.
The Economist is a conservative, free market publication. Citing them is a pretty powerful repudiation of your position, which is based on ideological opposition, not based on examining the actual results.
Yeah...no. My history with this issue is that I was uncomfortable with it when I heard about it because of precedent--which is a position The Economist still shares, by the way, and another which you disputed in the other thread. I'd call this shooting yourself in the foot, except this is the third time and you've run out of feet. Maybe we can make that pentagon room a hexagon, instead, then.
Back to the issue: I didn't become outraged about it until I heard the specific details. It's those same details that I kept harping on in the other thread, and which you consistently ignored or glossed over. So, while you can say you want to be "examining the actual results," you've resisted actually, ya' know, doing it.
And I don't care if a normally free-market publication is, in one instance, saying government intervention worked out, or wasn't as horrible as such-and-such suggested. That fact contains zero argumentative content.
They said some concessions were made to unions. It didn't regard it as a complete sell-out, which was your position. I never said the government didn't make concessions to the unions either. Obviously they did. But the Unions made concessions as well. They contrasted Obama's approach to France, and found that conservative government's approach inferior to the Obama approach, which according to them France's was purely political and Obama's wasn't.
Ah, I see what we're doing now. You're going to hang your hat on "complete" sell-out, right? Which means what? Total ownership? What would qualify as a sell-out, exactly?
What I argued was that it was a union giveaway, and that requiring that it be a union giveaway made it impossible for the kind of market-driven solutions some were advocating to come to bear. Your response to this has been...well, nothing, basically.
I am not going to answer arguments you make in old links to old because I already answered them. If you think I haven't you can argue them again.
I know you haven't, dude. And what's the difference between arguing them again and linking you to them, particularly given that the other thread is specifically for this topic, and this one isn't? Are you saying I'll get answers if I copy and paste them here?
This is really a dead issue at this point. The liberals won one.The proof is General Motors and Chrysler are still here and doing better than they have for a long time. Government intervention worked.
It's amazing how much energy and bandwidth you expend just repeating your initial claims. If you spent half as much actually answering questions posed to you, we might actually get somewhere.
will.15
03-09-12, 03:42 PM
Yeah...no. My history with this issue is that I was uncomfortable with it when I heard about it because of precedent--which is a position The Economist still shares, by the way, and another which you disputed in the other thread. I'd call this shooting yourself in the foot, except this is the third time and you've run out of feet. Maybe we can make that pentagon room a hexagon, instead, then.
Your point in this thread was the bailout was not a success, not you were uneasy with it because of precedent. That is a separate issue.
Back to the issue: I didn't become outraged about it until I heard the specific details. It's those same details that I kept harping on in the other thread, and which you consistently ignored or glossed over. So, while you can say you want to be "examining the actual results," you've resisted actually, ya' know, doing it.
No, you are the one that resists it. You don't like the bailout that was negotiated apparently because it did not bust up the unions and some debtors didn't like the results and may have done better if the companies went through normal bankruptcy proceedings and were liquidated . You are not talking about the economic results of the bailout. Did it work or not? Did it save the auto industry in the country or not?
And I don't care if a normally free-market publication is, in one instance, saying government intervention worked out, or wasn't as horrible as such-and-such suggested. That fact contains zero argumentative content.
You have to be kidding. If a normal free market publication says a government intervention worked out, and an intellectual economist based one, of course it matters, because they have left their ideological prism, which you refuse to do, and actually looked at the results.
Ah, I see what we're doing now. You're going to hang your hat on "complete" sell-out, right? Which means what? Total ownership? What would qualify as a sell-out, exactly?
What I argued was that it was a union giveaway, and that requiring that it be a union giveaway made it impossible for the kind of market-driven solutions some were advocating to come to bear. Your response to this has been...well, nothing, basically.
Oh, excuse me. I used the wrong exact term. Well, The Economist still didn't say it was a union giveaway, and it wasn't. Concessions were made by both sides, which were negotiated, and government involvement meant it wasn't a market-driven solution, but they intervened in the first place because there was no market-driven solution at the time because of the bank crisis that would have left the two auto companies still surviving. It would have been liquidation time. I can cite all sorts of sources that say this.
And this paragraph contradicts your first paragraph where you said you didn't become outraged about the bailout until you heard the details. Here you say you were opposed because it wasn't a market driven solution. Any bailout by government will not be market-driven. How could it be?
I know you haven't, dude. And what's the difference between arguing them again and linking you to them, particularly given that the other thread is specifically for this topic, and this one isn't? Are you saying I'll get answers if I copy and paste them here?
Because if you think you have made some point that wasn't properly addressed the only way to make sure it is understood is to argue it again. Looking at old posts that says a lot of different things doesn't do that.
It's amazing how much energy and bandwidth you expend just repeating your initial claims. If you spent half as much actually answering questions posed to you, we might actually get somewhere.
You are talking about how you don't like government intervention in general. It is from an ideological basis that is not based on looking at what happened economically after the auto industry was bailed out. I am talking about how the government bailed out the auto industry and they are doing well. Your questions don't have anything to do with what I am talking about. I'm like Mitt Romney in one regard. You can ask the questions you want and I can answer the questions I want. Your questions mostly change the subject.
Your point in this thread was the bailout was not a success, not you were uneasy with it because of precedent. That is a separate issue.
You're misunderstanding. You're claiming that I oppose the bailout for purely ideological reasons and not because of what it actually did. And I'm saying, no, I am more opposed to it now than I was from the get-to, when all I had were ideological reasons to oppose it.
No, you are the one that resists it. You don't like the bailout that was negotiated apparently because it did not bust up the unions and some debtors didn't like the results and may have done better if the companies went through normal bankruptcy proceedings and were liquidated .
I love how not wanting unions to get political handouts is now apparently the same thing as wanting to "bust up the unions."
You are not talking about the economic results of the bailout. Did it work or not? Did it save the auto industry in the country or not?
No, it didn't. For two reasons, both of which I've already explained in the other thread (paragraphs 5-8; see why I keep pointing you there?):
1) If their business model was already sound, and there was profit to be had in salvaging them, private investors could have taken on the risk as well as government. Provided the government didn't require special treatment for the unions, of course. But somehow that wasn't an option. I wonder why. Probably has nothing to do with that big, politically influential, strongly Democratic automaker union.
2) If their business model wasn't/isn't sound, then "saving" them is really just delaying their demise.
Thinking this issue should only consist of that one question is ridiculous. If someone were helping you buy a car, and they spent $30,000 of your money on a jalopy, they could not call it a "success" merely on the grounds that you did, in fact, have a car. To be a success something has to meet its goals (1), has to have worthwhile goals to begin with (2), and has to be a good choice in light of the other options available (3). The auto bailout was only a "success" under the first, which is meaningless without (at least) the second.
In other words, the question is simplistic and reductionist, and the answer is no.
You have to be kidding. If a normal free market publication says a government intervention worked out, and an intellectual economist based one, of course it matters, because they have left their ideological prism, which you refuse to do, and actually looked at the results.
Do you not understand what an argument is? I used to ask this sort of thing rhetorically, but I feel like I have to ask it seriously now. You may think The Economist's departure from free market ideology is significant on this point, but it's not an argument, nor does it present some hurdle I have to jump over. I think they're wrong about this. I can think this just as easily as I can agree with a far more statist publication if they deviate from that view from time to time, too.
Oh, excuse me. I used the wrong exact term. Well, The Economist still didn't say it was a union giveaway, and it wasn't.
How are you determining this, exactly? They said they got "political favors"--how are you measuring that in order to say that doesn't constitute a "giveaway"?
And I'm not disparaging you for using a different term; I'm making sure the use of a different term isn't going to be another goalpost-moving situation where instead of defending what you said initially, you're suddenly defending the idea that it wasn't a "complete" sell-out.
Concessions were made by both sides, which were negotiated, and government involvement meant it wasn't a market-driven solution, but they intervened in the first place because there was no market-driven solution at the time because of the bank crisis that would have left the two auto companies still surviving. It would have been liquidation time. I can cite all sorts of sources that say this.
And liquidation likely leads to consolidation with other manufacturers', at least partially. But this is revealing, because liquidation is another thing that would specifically hurt unions, which means the underlying assumption that it had to be "saved" and preserved in its basic existing form (which a qualification you've consistently left unstated when you talk about "saving" the industry) was, itself, also favorable to unions. By the way, I addressed liquidation in paragraphs 12-14 in the old post. See-why-I-keep-pointing-you-there?, Part II.
As for "concessions were made by both sides" -- I addressed that here (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=746664) (See-why-I-keep-pointing-you-there?, Part III). Your response was, I believe, to try to make some weird distinction between which expenses contributed to which costs (which makes no sense whatsoever) and to say the arrangement was "good for both sides" to which I asked the obvious question: if it was good for both sides, why'd they need to be bailed out at all? You then got confused and talked about why the bailout was good for both sides, and I repeated the question. That's when you stopped replying.
There is absolutely no reason to do this silly dance. The questions back then are still completely applicable.
And this paragraph contradicts your first paragraph where you said you didn't become outraged about the bailout until you heard the details. Here you say you were opposed because it wasn't a market driven solution. Any bailout by government will not be market-driven. How could it be?
This isn't even close to a contradiction. For one, I said I didn't become "outraged," not that I was fine with it. And for another, I only said that the union giveaway stipulation made a market-driven solution impossible, not that I would only favor a market-driven solution. So, in addition to asking you if you know what an argument is, I feel like I now have to ask if you know what a contradiction is, because it ain't this.
Because if you think you have made some point that wasn't properly addressed the only way to make sure it is understood is to argue it again. Looking at old posts that says a lot of different things doesn't do that.
Yeah, you just went right past what I asked. I'll repeat it: what's the difference between "argue it again" and "here's a link to the argument again"? Can I just copy and paste the whole thing, then? Because I've asked you several questions in this post that I'd already asked you over there.
You are talking about how you don't like government intervention in general. It is from an ideological basis that is not based on looking at what happened economically after the auto industry was bailed out.
This is obviously false, because...check this out...we don't seem to disagree about the facts. The auto industry was in turmoil, it was bailed out in a way that favored unions (though you want to use a much softer words to describe this), and the auto industry still exists. We agree on all three of those things. What we don't agree is on what it means, and what would have happened otherwise.
I am talking about how the government bailed out the auto industry and they are doing well. Your questions don't have anything to do with what I am talking about. I'm like Mitt Romney in one regard. You can ask the questions you want and I can answer the questions I want. Your questions mostly change the subject.
While I'm gratified that you'd finally admit that you sometimes refuse to answer questions, the idea that the things I ask you "mostly change the subject" is total bull. In this post alone I've had to ask you several things I already asked you in the other post. The questions have been about the structure of the bailouts, the counterfactual of what might have happened without them, and the breakdown of unioned and non-unionized treatment. How in the hell are these changes of subject?
will.15
03-09-12, 07:37 PM
You're misunderstanding. You're claiming that I oppose the bailout for purely ideological reasons and not because of what it actually did. And I'm saying, no, I am more opposed to it now than I was from the get-to, when all I had were ideological reasons to oppose it.
As far as I can tell that is all you had and still have.
I love how not wanting unions to get political handouts is now apparently the same thing as wanting to "bust up the unions."
You call it political handouts. The auto industry didn't have to accept concessions to the unions if they didn't want to. The unions didn't get everything they wanted, the companies didn't get everything they wanted, their was give and take, it was negotiated with all three groups. That is not a political handout. The Economist did not think it was a political handout.
No, it didn't. For two reasons, both of which I've already explained in the other thread (paragraphs 5-8; see why I keep pointing you there?):
1) If their business model was already sound, and there was profit to be had in salvaging them, private investors could have taken on the risk as well as government. Provided the government didn't require special treatment for the unions, of course. But somehow that wasn't an option. I wonder why. Probably has nothing to do with that big, politically influential, strongly Democratic automaker union.
Before the Obama administration became involved the automakers were free to make a deal with private investors. They had plenty of time to do it. The problem began at the end of Bush's term. They didn't. Why not? Because the banking crisis at that point made investment money scarce. You are talking about phantom investors. There is zero evidence there were any serious investors in the auto industry. It appears if any turned up it would have been after a bankruptcy proceeding in a leveraged buyout which would have just broken up the assets. It would have been a fire sale with a buyout firm using the assets of the company as collateral. Romney knows a lot about those kind of deals.
2) If their business model wasn't/isn't sound, then "saving" them is really just delaying their demise.
Only there is no demise. They are doing better today then they were doing.
And here we go again. You are not arguing results. You are arguing ideology. The government intervened because of the banking crisis. It created an unusual emergency situation. The auto industry was struggling before the crisis. The crisis put them in a terminal situation where government intervention was the only thing that could save them. The government created demands on both unions and management that saved the auto industry. IT was shared sacrifice, not handouts.
As I repeatedly have said, your arguments ignore the reality. It clashes with your ideological purity so you keep repeating the same mantra and disregard where the industry is today and where it was three years ago.
If you want to argue the auto industry shouldn't have been rescued by government because it is not the role of government, fine, but to pretend it was not successful in saving the industry and a lot of jobs is wearing ideological blinders.
Thinking this issue should only consist of that one question is ridiculous. If someone were helping you buy a car, and they spent $30,000 of your money on a jalopy, they could not call it a "success" merely on the grounds that you did, in fact, have a car. To be a success something has to meet its goals (1), has to have worthwhile goals to begin with (2), and has to be a good choice in light of the other options available (3). The auto bailout was only a "success" under the first, which is meaningless without (at least) the second.
Ideology is speaking again. I would argue the second and third also apply. There were no other good options available. Bankruptcy according to most observers would have led to liquidation. Romney's editorial supporting bankruptcy as a better option was roundly criticized by most economists including many conservatives. It looks like three for three to me. The only way to prove your view is correct is to let them go through bankruptcy without government intervention, which even Romney opposed. As usual with him, he had a weasley position, government bailout money for the industry, but let them go through bankruptcy in a controlled situation. That sounded like a total disaster.
In other words, the question is simplistic and reductionist, and the answer is no.
Do you not understand what an argument is? I used to ask this sort of thing rhetorically, but I feel like I have to ask it seriously now. You may think The Economist's departure from free market ideology is significant on this point, but it's not an argument, nor does it present some hurdle I have to jump over. I think they're wrong about this. I can think this just as easily as I can agree with a far more statist publication if they deviate from that view from time to time, too.
You say they are wrong, but can't show they are. An argument becomes meaningless when the facts contradict the argument. The Economist recognizes this and you don't. Scientists form a theory and test it. If they don't prove it with scientific evidence they change the theory. If they prove it, the theory is validated. The notion government bailout of the auto industry would be a disaster has been proven wrong.
How are you determining this, exactly? They said they got "political favors"--how are you measuring that in order to say that doesn't constitute a "giveaway"?
And the auto industry got political favors also. A giveaway would be an unfair advantage of unions over management. The Economist didn't say that and by discussing what happened in France pretty much said the opposite. They specifically said Obama's approach was not purely political.
And I'm not disparaging you for using a different term; I'm making sure the use of a different term isn't going to be another goalpost-moving situation where instead of defending what you said initially, you're suddenly defending the idea that it wasn't a "complete" sell-out.
And liquidation likely leads to consolidation with other manufacturers', at least partially. But this is revealing, because liquidation is another thing that would specifically hurt unions, which means the underlying assumption that it had to be "saved" and preserved in its basic existing form (which a qualification you've consistently left unstated when you talk about "saving" the industry) was, itself, also favorable to unions. By the way, I addressed liquidation in paragraphs 12-14 in the old post. See-why-I-keep-pointing-you-there?, Part II.
If the auto industry got any leaner, there would be no auto industry in this country. You keep ignoring the reality that it was extremely unlikely GM or Chrysler would have survived bankruptcy proceeding. There wouldn't be unions and there wouldn't be workers and there wouldn't be management.
As for "concessions were made by both sides" -- I addressed that here (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=746664) (See-why-I-keep-pointing-you-there?, Part III). Your response was, I believe, to try to make some weird distinction between which expenses contributed to which costs (which makes no sense whatsoever) and to say the arrangement was "good for both sides" to which I asked the obvious question: if it was good for both sides, why'd they need to be bailed out at all? You then got confused and talked about why the bailout was good for both sides, and I repeated the question. That's when you stopped replying.
There is absolutely no reason to do this silly dance. The questions back then are still completely applicable.
I am not confused. You seem to be. If the bailout wasn't good for both sides there wouldn't have been a bailout. If the automakers could have survived without the bailout they would have. if they thought the government's terms were not in their interest they would have not accepted it. They got their pension costs down, concessions by the unions on workplace rules, and other things.
This isn't even close to a contradiction. For one, I said I didn't become "outraged," not that I was fine with it. And for another, I only said that the union giveaway stipulation made a market-driven solution impossible, not that I would only favor a market-driven solution. So, in addition to asking you if you know what an argument is, I feel like I now have to ask if you know what a contradiction is, because it ain't this.
I already addressed this earlier. A market driven solution existed before the auto industry agreed to the bailout.
Yeah, you just went right past what I asked. I'll repeat it: what's the difference between "argue it again" and "here's a link to the argument again"? Can I just copy and paste the whole thing, then? Because I've asked you several questions in this post that I'd already asked you over there.
Look, you are not even arguing about the positive results of the bailout. You are still stuck on bailouts are bad, there shouldn't have been one in the first place. You can argue that, but that has nothing to do with your contention the bailout was a failure. Your making up reasons it wasn't that defies logic.
This is obviously false, because...check this out...we don't seem to disagree about the facts. The auto industry was in turmoil, it was bailed out in a way that favored unions (though you want to use a much softer words to describe this), and the auto industry still exists. We agree on all three of those things. What we don't agree is on what it means, and what would have happened otherwise.
You said the bailout was a failure. If the industry survives, even if it was done in a way that benefited unions, how is that a failure?
Most observers believe the domestic auto industry, well two-thirds of it and possibly all of it, would have ended without the bailout.
You argued earlier the United States would have survived without them. Someday we may have to, but it would have been catastrophic if it happened all at once when we were on the brink of a potential depression instead of what has been termed as the Great Recession.
While I'm gratified that you'd finally admit that you sometimes refuse to answer questions, the idea that the things I ask you "mostly change the subject" is total bull. In this post alone I've had to ask you several things I already asked you in the other post. The questions have been about the structure of the bailouts, the counterfactual of what might have happened without them, and the breakdown of unioned and non-unionized treatment. How in the hell are these changes of subject?
They change the subject because you said the bailout was a failure. None of your questions have anything to do with that.
You in the past ignore many points I make and I could care less. Believe me, if I thought you were making a point worth responding to, I would. I would even concede a point which I have done on occasion. But in my opinion you are not doing a great job here.
As far as I can tell that is all you had and still have.
Whether you think this or not is beside the point, which is that it's the facts of what took place, and not some preexisting ideology, that caused me to have such distaste for it. So you can call it wrong (and that can be, like, 80% of your argument, apparently) but not pathological, I'm afraid.
But really, all this "you're just arguing because of ideology" stuff is dumb. Ideology is not the opposite of evidence; good ideology is based on, and incorporates, evidence, for one. And for another, focus on the content of the claim; trying to refute things by talking about why I believe it is a logical fallacy.
You call it political handouts. The auto industry didn't have to accept concessions to the unions if they didn't want to. The unions didn't get everything they wanted, the companies didn't get everything they wanted, their was give and take, it was negotiated with all three groups. That is not a political handout. The Economist did not think it was a political handout.
Leaving aside your bizarre insistence that the Economist be treated as the equivalent of the Papacy on this issue, they said it was a political favor. I see no basis from which you can say whether or not a "favor" can encompass a "handout," or whether one is more or less egregious than another. They agree on the fundamental point, however, which is that they were unfairly benefitted (it can't be a favor unless you're getting more than you otherwise should). You're just arguing about how much they were unfairly benefitted. As far as I'm concerned, if your only response is to haggle over semantics about how to describe the favoritism, the point is proven.
I think the idea that the "auto industry didn't have to accept concessions to the unions" is highly naive. The government was not wholly passive here, and the executives wanted the bailout, too. And the government's first pretext was that any private investment must prioritize union workers; that's a pretty clear signal about what they wanted out of this.
Before the Obama administration became involved the automakers were free to make a deal with private investors. They had plenty of time to do it. The problem began at the end of Bush's term. They didn't. Why not? Because the banking crisis at that point made investment money scarce. You are talking about phantom investors. There is zero evidence there were any serious investors in the auto industry. It appears if any turned up it would have been after a bankruptcy proceeding in a leveraged buyout which would have just broken up the assets. It would have been a fire sale with a buyout firm using the assets of the company as collateral. Romney knows a lot about those kind of deals.
Er, define "serious." Fiat bought a fifth-stake in Chrysler, I think it was. And leaving aside the incredible amount of speculation involved, you're still treating even partial liquidation as if it's inherently unacceptable. Which means when you say they "saved" the industry, you should add the qualifier that what you really mean is not that they saved auto manufacturing, or allowed Americans to keep making or selling cars, but that they just kept it the way it was, even though the way it was was producing some really crappy products and outrageously high costs. This is a defense?
Let me follow-up with a simple question: is it valuable when a company screws up and goes out of business as a result? If so, why? And what do you think happens when these things are liquidated? Please, trace the economic effects out beyond that first cause, if you would.
Only there is no demise. They are doing better today then they were doing.
Well, there's none yet, which should be expected so soon after artificially propping the whole thing up. But even if there doesn't end up being one, that only means that the other possibility (I listed two, you may recall) is true; which is what I happen to believe.
And here we go again. You are not arguing results. You are arguing ideology. The government intervened because of the banking crisis. It created an unusual emergency situation. The auto industry was struggling before the crisis. The crisis put them in a terminal situation where government intervention was the only thing that could save them. The government created demands on both unions and management that saved the auto industry. IT was shared sacrifice, not handouts.
It really wasn't: union compensation beforehand, including benefits, was $73 an hour at GM. Coming down from what you wanted or had is not "compromise" if what you wanted or had was completely ridiculous to start with. Politicians do this all the time by demanding way too much and then talking about "compromise," as if each starting position is equal and therefore both sides should bend to meet in the middle. That wasn't the case here.
On top of that, the alternative to accepting lower benefits packages was mass layoffs to stay afloat, so calling it a "concession" is a misnomer.
Basically, you're giving the union brownie points for backing off a position when a) it was impossibly extravgant to begin with, and b) their only alternative to it was layoffs.
As I repeatedly have said, your arguments ignore the reality. It clashes with your ideological purity so you keep repeating the same mantra and disregard where the industry is today and where it was three years ago.
And where would that money be otherwise? What would it be doing? You cannot possibly hope to talk meaningfully about economics if you don't even attempt to trace counterfactuals.
If you want to argue the auto industry shouldn't have been rescued by government because it is not the role of government, fine, but to pretend it was not successful in saving the industry and a lot of jobs is wearing ideological blinders.
And once again, we come to that incredibly disheartening moment where it becomes clear you don't even know what my position is, despite the fact that you've been arguing about it. Ugh.
Yes, I'm arguing that rescuing the auto industry is not the role of government. Absolutely. And I'm also arguing that it didn't really save jobs on net in the long run; it just saved specific jobs of a specific type in the short-term. I'm saying it was not government's job, it sets a bad precedent, it was political favoritism, it was risky (it socialized the risk), and it took capital away from other areas. The nicest thing I can say about it is that it could have been worse, if they'd done all that and the companies had failed immediately anyway. So I guess there's that, but that's what they call "damning with faint praise."
Ideology is speaking again. I would argue the second and third also apply. There were no other good options available. Bankruptcy according to most observers would have led to liquidation. Romney's editorial supporting bankruptcy as a better option was roundly criticized by most economists including many conservatives. It looks like three for three to me. The only way to prove your view is correct is to let them go through bankruptcy without government intervention, which even Romney opposed. As usual with him, he had a weasley position, government bailout money for the industry, but let them go through bankruptcy in a controlled situation. That sounded like a total disaster.
If your first priority is protecting the unions, then yeah, it probably does.
You say they are wrong, but can't show they are.
Um, you do realize this entire argument is about whether or not I can show that they are, right? So you're basically just reminding me that we're arguing.
An argument becomes meaningless when the facts contradict the argument. The Economist recognizes this and you don't. Scientists form a theory and test it. If they don't prove it with scientific evidence they change the theory. If they prove it, the theory is validated.
Yup, scientific method. Yay for science. But as I pointed out before, none of the basic facts are in dispute by either of us.
The notion government bailout of the auto industry would be a disaster has been proven wrong.
Well, no, it hasn't, but I did't say it would be a "disaster," anyway.
Tell me something, if you would: how would you measure the damage done by things like, say, establishing precedents for bailouts? Or superseding bankruptcy law in a way that favors a politically influential group? Or gambling with taxpayer money? Clearly these things matter; whether they're justified or not, they are not without cost. So how do you measure their damage? Because so far, you just seem to brush them off.
And the auto industry got political favors also. A giveaway would be an unfair advantage of unions over management. The Economist didn't say that and by discussing what happened in France pretty much said the opposite. They specifically said Obama's approach was not purely political.
Ooo boy, look at all the little things embedded in this. First, I'm not arguing management over unions, I'm arguing taxpayers and other creditors over both, but their editorial said that the top managers were "swept aside," so this statement manages to be both wrong and irrelevant. Second, the Economist did not "pretty much [say] the opposite" at all: they talked about the overall requirements of the loan in comparison to France; it said nothing about the balance of unions and management, nor does France tell us anything about this situation, especially since the only detail listed about Sarkozy's stipulation sounds like protectionism, which is the opposite of the kinds of things I'm advocating. Third, I'm not sure what favors you do your argument by saying Obama's approach was not purely political, as if you can defend the action by shooting down absolute statements that I'm not even advancing to begin with.
And fourth, it's kind of hilarious how you seem to think you can respond to everything with whatever the Economist said. More still when you keep twisting what you say it said, or reading into it. Though since you seem to think so highly of them, I suppose you agree with them that he was gambling by doing this, even though you disagreed with that statement before? And I suppose you took special notice of their observation that "a union health fund did far better than secured bondholders whose claims should have been senior"?
If the auto industry got any leaner, there would be no auto industry in this country. You keep ignoring the reality that it was extremely unlikely GM or Chrysler would have survived bankruptcy proceeding. There wouldn't be unions and there wouldn't be workers and there wouldn't be management.
Er, I'm not ignoring that at all. You're just acting like our only priority in this was to preserve union jobs at any cost and anything that didn't do that (and do so in the short-term as well as the long-term) was completely unacceptable.
I am not confused. You seem to be. If the bailout wasn't good for both sides there wouldn't have been a bailout. If the automakers could have survived without the bailout they would have. if they thought the government's terms were not in their interest they would have not accepted it. They got their pension costs down, concessions by the unions on workplace rules, and other things.
Ugh, now you're confused about what you were confused about. Stay with me, man: in the last discussion, I started talking to you about union bargaining before the bailout, because we were talking about how it became necessary in the first place. I was describing the untenably massive benefits plans and inherently implausible pension packages that helped get them in this situation in the first place. You then mixed that up with a different line of argument and started defending the bailout instead. And now you've capped it all off by forgetting the initial topic entirely and acting like we were never talking about it. Oof.
Maybe it's better if you just ignored this part. It's now become abundantly clear that you just misspoke. At least, I hope that's the explanation.
Look, you are not even arguing about the positive results of the bailout. You are still stuck on bailouts are bad, there shouldn't have been one in the first place. You can argue that, but that has nothing to do with your contention the bailout was a failure. Your making up reasons it wasn't that defies logic.
The positive results of the bailout? Hmm, okay. The positive results primarily apply to union workers: they get to keep their jobs and a decent amount of their benefits and pensions. They got to jump to the front of the line by government decree. Being a taxpayer and not a union worker, I don't regard this as very positive.
You said the bailout was a failure. If the industry survives, even if it was done in a way that benefited unions, how is that a failure?
Most observers believe the domestic auto industry, well two-thirds of it and possibly all of it, would have ended without the bailout.
You argued earlier the United States would have survived without them. Someday we may have to, but it would have been catastrophic if it happened all at once when we were on the brink of a potential depression instead of what has been termed as the Great Recession.
Well, it wouldn't have happened all at once, because when a company declares bankruptcy it goes right on operating and buys itself time to pay off its creditors, first of all. And secondly, bankruptcy courts have the power to take the public good into account, too; it's not perfectly rigid. And it's more than a little convenient to talk about what would have happened, because there's no way to test it. Remember the little rundown you just gave me about testing theories against reality? Conveniently, we can't do any of that with any of the claims of doom about the auto industry. This bears a striking similarity to the rhetoric defending the stimulus. In both cases, the inability to test the theory against reality means it can be exploited like mad with all sorts of tales of hypothetical woe about how the human race would finally have perished from this mortal coil if we didn't prioritize union pensions over non-union ones, or something.
Ah, but I've gone a little while without asking a question, so here's another one: the airlines have been in bankruptcy and out multiple times, and somehow the sky's never fallen. Not even close, in fact. Why is that?
They change the subject because you said the bailout was a failure. None of your questions have anything to do with that.
My God man, yes they do. My questions are all about the reasons why it was a failure. Look at the weird requirements you've created here: you ask me to show why it wasn't a success, but any elaboration or questions on the topic are said to be a change in the subject, because the subject is about what a success it was. So you've created an impossible mobius strip where everything is either a) about how great the bailout was, or b) off-topic. Make the topic "success" and nobody gets to talk about failures. Brilliant. :rolleyes:
You in the past ignore many points I make and I could care less. Believe me, if I thought you were making a point worth responding to, I would. I would even concede a point which I have done on occasion. But in my opinion you are not doing a great job here.
Yeah, the "hey, you ignore some, I ignore some" equivocation doesn't fit here, for one very simple reason: in the course of this discussion I ended up asking you many of the same questions I asked you before. You might have a point if we were taking some new angle on the discussion, but we're not, and I'm asking a lot of the same things now as I was then. It's really silly.
will.15
03-12-12, 09:35 PM
It is getting too long to go through that point by point. But the more you discuss it the more it becomes obvious your position to the bailout is entirely ideology and has nothing to do with the reasons it was done or what it did. Why did the unions get some concessions? Because the companies wanted to avoid bankruptcy. The only way you could disregard union contracts was to go through bankruptcy. And if you think pissing off workers by tearing up contracts and allowing mangement to dictate terms would be the best way for the auto industry to heal itself, you don't know anything about labor mangement relations You have a real mad-on hostility toward unions and seem to think the sole reason the automakers were in such big trouble was their labor costs were too high. It was one of many factors. And your claim the only positive thing that came out of it unions made out like bandits is absurd. You continue to ignore the necessity for the bailout at the time, ii was during an economic crisis, and the destruction of the auto industry would have really added to the mess. Would we be coming out of this thing now if the industry hadn't been bailed out? I doubt it. it is a huge industry and many jobs would have been affected that don't directly build cars. it would have had a real snowball effect. That thing you keep bringing up, that any private plan had to match the public one, that seems to be a talking point from conservatives against it, i can find no discussion from anywhere else. And the reality is there was no private sector interest, that is why the government stepped in. If the companies could have found an investor or buyer, they would have. They couldn't. Any prospective buyers would have waited for a bankruptcy, the leveraged buyout boys, and that would have meant shrinking the assets down much more than occurred after the bailout and selling pieces of it where they could to the Asians. Your prospective seller interested in buying intact companies to turn them around is a fairy tale that didn't exist.
I will quote this paragraph of yours:
Yes, I'm arguing that rescuing the auto industry is not the role of government. Absolutely. And I'm also arguing that it didn't really save jobs on net in the long run; it just saved specific jobs of a specific type in the short-term. I'm saying it was not government's job, it sets a bad precedent, it was political favoritism, it was risky (it socialized the risk), and it took capital away from other areas. The nicest thing I can say about it is that it could have been worse, if they'd done all that and the companies had failed immediately anyway. So I guess there's that, but that's what they call "damning with faint praise."
...because there are no facts here, just ideology. Nothing there is supported by facts. It sets a bad precedent? Only if it failed, and I don't see any interest in bailing out every company that gets into trouble. it was an extraordinary sitiation. It was political favoritism? Because it benefited unions and management? It would have been more acceptable to you if management only benefited and workers got screwed? It was risky? Government whenever they do something that hasn't been done before are being risky. You support risky things like school vouchers. Anything untried and new is risky. It took capitol from other areas. Really? At the time there was minimal capitol being invested by the private sector. The banks were scared to loan for anything.
The success of the bailout upsets the belief of the fervent free marketers that governemnt intervention in the public sector is always wrong. Even when the results turn out right they find reasons to oppose it unrelated to reality. They will always find reasons to criticize it even when there isn't anything to criticize, just as they will alwys skew facts to show a free market approach always works even when it fails or the results are ambiguous. Me, I am not an ideolgue. I was skeptical the bailout would work, but also knew there were no good options. The governemnt gambled, but they made good decisions about the way it was done and it paid off. If the automakers had not gotten into trouble when the banks were sitting on their hands, the bailout would not have happened. The capitalist system had broken down for the moment and wasn't working. To have rigid faith in the free market when the system wasn't functioning is like the person who refuses to go to a doctor when they are sick because it goes against their faith. Survival sometimes depends on knowing when to deviate from your principles.
IBut the more you discuss it the more it becomes obvious your position to the bailout is entirely ideology and has nothing to do with the reasons it was done or what it did.
I've answered this in, like, three different ways. I'll summarize them: 1) ideology is not mutually exclusive from evidence, as you often imply, 2) if my opposition were purely ideological I wouldn't dislike it more as I learned more about it, and I wouldn't be able to give you non-ideological reasons I dislike it...but I did/have. And 3) my reasons for believing something are separate from whether or not those things are true.
Why did the unions get some concessions? Because the companies wanted to avoid bankruptcy. The only way you could disregard union contracts was to go through bankruptcy. And if you think pissing off workers by tearing up contracts and allowing mangement to dictate terms would be the best way for the auto industry to heal itself, you don't know anything about labor mangement relations
You're omitting the reason the first two sentences are connected. The unions got "concessions" (your attempts to play down the favoritism by using softer words is highly amusing) because the companies wanted to avoid bankruptcy...and their only other option was a bailout. Which leaves unstated the idea that the bailout had to include union favoritism. So either you're agreeing with me, or your argument makes no sense. Go ahead and pick.
The reference to "pissing off workers" is revealing. Are you implying that they'd have been pissed off if they didn't get favoritism, and that they should have been given it just to stop this from happening?
You have a real mad-on hostility toward unions and seem to think the sole reason the automakers were in such big trouble was their labor costs were too high. It was one of many factors.
They made over $70 an hour when you factored in benefits. They had a "jobs bank" program that paod them benefits and supplemental pay for 48 weeks if they're laid off, and a package that pays them 95% of their wages and benefits that kicks in after those 48 weeks are over, and which they can remain in for years. "One of many factors." That's a good one.
Would we be coming out of this thing now if the industry hadn't been bailed out? I doubt it. it is a huge industry and many jobs would have been affected that don't directly build cars. it would have had a real snowball effect.
The problem (well, one of them) is that you seem to have just swallowed this idea without a lot of question, even though everything you're saying is entirely dependendent on it. But it wasn't some kind of consensus (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122823078705672467.html), and as I pointed out before, the airlines have gone through bankruptcy without dragging the entire economy down. Why? Why do we need three big automakers rather than 1 or 2? Where do you think that money and those resources go otherwise? It doesn't vanish. Your entire position requires that you think about the first effect of the bailout and then stop immediately. If you continue, the problems become obvious.
It's worth pointing out that the idea you've so fervently accepted about the automakers' importance to the economy came from...the automakers. They spent tens of millions of dollars to lobby Congress, and encouraged employees and dealerships to call and utilize talking points about how doomed we'd all be if they weren't bailed out. It was a lobbying blitz.
Any prospective buyers would have waited for a bankruptcy, the leveraged buyout boys, and that would have meant shrinking the assets down much more than occurred after the bailout and selling pieces of it where they could to the Asians. Your prospective seller interested in buying intact companies to turn them around is a fairy tale that didn't exist.
I didn't say they would buy intact companies. I said it's not going to bring the economy down if they buy them and sell parts of them. As I keep pointing out, you seem unable to even consider the possibility that maybe these companies could exist in some other form, or be somehow consolidated. Most of the arguments you're making are only possible if you first decide, arbitrarily, that this idea is completely unacceptable.
...because there are no facts here, just ideology. Nothing there is supported by facts.
Yeah, when you decide not to quote any part of the post with facts in it, then whatever's left will have no facts. Neato.
It sets a bad precedent? Only if it failed, and I don't see any interest in bailing out every company that gets into trouble. it was an extraordinary sitiation.
You'll see a lot more of it if people keep trumpeting it as a resounding success. You seem to have this whole thing backwards: it's not more likely to happen if it fails, it's less likely because it failed. Not that that's even relevant to the question: it doesn't set a bad precedent to break down a door without a warrant if you don't find something inside. The precedent exists either way.
It was political favoritism? Because it benefited unions and management? It would have been more acceptable to you if management only benefited and workers got screwed?
Er, no, it was political favoritism because it favored unions over people who owned secured debt and other creditors. The fact that you're apparently now asking me about some goofy opposite hypothetical where management gets favoritism instead (which I didn't advocate) tells me you really don't have an answer for the union stuff, as much as you'd like to deny it. Oh, and despite your attempt to paint it as management vs. unions, as I pointed out in the other thread (See-why-I-keep-pointing-you-back-there?, Part V) it also meant favoring union workers over non-union ones. The favoritism was that blatant; it didn't even wear the cloak of populism.
It was risky? Government whenever they do something that hasn't been done before are being risky. You support risky things like school vouchers. Anything untried and new is risky.
Yeah, it is. Especially when the risk is for tens of billions of dollars to bail out a faiing industry, as opposed to a few million on a school choice experiment. Anyway, sounds like you're conceding the point about it being a gamble, then, despite your initial disagreement of it. Great. But next time, it'd be better if you just agreed to begin with rather than issue a kneejerk disagreement and then make me erode it down over time.
It took capitol from other areas. Really? At the time there was minimal capitol being invested by the private sector. The banks were scared to loan for anything.
And yet you keep telling me the other automakers were going to swoop in afterwards and liquidate things. So either that's true, and that capital would be elsewhere, or it isn't, and half of what you've been saying you no longer believe. Go ahead and pick.
The success of the bailout upsets the belief of the fervent free marketers that governemnt intervention in the public sector is always wrong. Even when the results turn out right they find reasons to oppose it unrelated to reality.
If I carried around as many misconceptions in my head about markets as you do, I probably wouldn't like them much, either. People don't disbelieve in government intervention because it's literally impossible for it to ever work (though the examples of it "working" always seem to involve clearing a very low bar), or for it to be not-terrible from time to time, but because it's a really bad idea in general. Particularly given that, when it manages to be not-terrible, people trumpet its success and we get more of it.
I'm not the ideological purity guy; I'm not a libertarian. I don't have any problem with the idea that the government can sometimes get involved in things and not make a huge mess of it. But you're grading on a government curve here, where you want it to receive credit for something a private business would never consider adequate, and worse, you don't even seem to have considered the counterfactuals.
They will always find reasons to criticize it even when there isn't anything to criticize, just as they will alwys skew facts to show a free market approach always works even when it fails or the results are ambiguous. Me, I am not an ideolgue. I was skeptical the bailout would work, but also knew there were no good options. The governemnt gambled, but they made good decisions about the way it was done and it paid off. If the automakers had not gotten into trouble when the banks were sitting on their hands, the bailout would not have happened. The capitalist system had broken down for the moment and wasn't working. To have rigid faith in the free market when the system wasn't functioning is like the person who refuses to go to a doctor when they are sick because it goes against their faith. Survival sometimes depends on knowing when to deviate from your principles.
Does it occur to you to ask why the banks were "sitting on their hands," or whether or not we should try to fix that problem, rather than artificially prop businesses up in the mean time? By the way, I made this same point in the other thread (Part VI), too, and got no answer.
If you actually want to cut the fat out of these discussions, I'm all for it, but that probably doesn't mean making half your post a big paragraph where you just summarize your position for the umpteenth time. Better to answer all the questions, if you actually want to get anywhere.
How did we go from climate change to you two bitching about the bailout? Get a thread you two.
Ah, but I did (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=759601). I created a thread for exactly this sort of thing. And when will brought up (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=796833) the auto bailouts in here (which was barely on topic to begin with), I pointed him back to that thread three different times; each time he refused to move it over there.
That said, it's pretty clear this all belongs there, whether will admits it or not, so if he replies again I'll move the posts over. Sorry if they got in the way of the real topic; I'm certainly no less annoyed with it than you.
will.15
03-13-12, 02:46 PM
It was brought up because it was a direct response to a comment made in this thread and. check it out, it was very, very brief. Yoda's reply was much longer. I didn't hijack the thread all by myself, and that is arguable, as the discussion was directly connected to what was being discussed, government should not invest in alternative energy sources because government is not competent to do any investing at all, no exceptions, and the private sector can do a better job of solving those kind of problems.
And check out his replies. Except when I posted an article his are much longer than mine. The last one I posted on the previous page was a general reply because if I tried to answer every point I would have been writing a book.
Here's what I said:
"Yeah, fusion was just some random example. Take your pick on that front; it can be tricky to find an alternative energy source the government hasn't flung some money at at some point. Which is kind of horrifying because it means, if any of them end up being "the" alternative, we'll have definitely spent tons of money crowding out its growth by funding all the others. The whole process is pretty sloppy and more than a little frantic, and I think savvy businesses are taking advantage of it. Just look at ethanol for a textbook example of how screwed up government can make energy issues."
The absolutes you think you heard ("government is not competent to do any investing at all, no exceptions") are conspicuously absent. I don't know what the length of the replies has to do with it, either. But let's not play dumb: repeating a previously (and heavily) disputed claim is inviting another dispute.
Regardless of the question of whether or not the initial foray was on topic, it was clearly off topic from that point forward, after which I repeatedly referred you back to the more appropriate thread, to no avail.
will.15
03-13-12, 03:06 PM
And why is this on me, if I reply? I reply to where the post is. If you want to move this discussion then do so, but my reply won't be any more off topic than it is now. I will wait to see if you move it, if not I will post here because it doesn't make much sense to repond in another thread if the previous posts are in this thread.
There. Moved.
It's on you because you brought it up. I said absolutely nothing about the auto bailout, and I also didn't say anything that was contradicted by the alleged success of the auto bailout. I listed examples of government mistakes in energy policy; I didn't make an absolute statement about their inability to ever do anything right, thus your counterexample of the auto bailout, even if I accept it as a success, does nothing to reply to that.
There's also basic common sense; as I said before, it's not believable that you assumed you could list a highly disputed counterexample and not spark the same discussion. Which is exactly what happened, as I ended up asking you duplicate questions over and over, while you continued to maintain the idea that we were having some sort of new discussion, rather than the same one over again.
Replying to "where the post is" is fine. But it serves no purpose if your reply is just going to hit a big "reset" button on a conversation we've already had elsewhere.
will.15
03-14-12, 06:48 AM
You didn't quote what I was responding to. It was this:
Yeah, the whole "green jobs" thing is kind of absurd on its face. If the market could bear these jobs, we wouldn't need government intervention in the first place. And if the market can't bear them out and some sort of incentive (or compulsion) is involved, then those jobs will probably only be around as long as the incentive or compulsion is in place.
My comment which was very brief, was a logical reaction to your usual government shouldn't interfere with the market. You were the one that turned the discussion into a marathon with your super long responses.
And like I said before, your comments in other threads had nothing to do with if the bailout succeeded in saving the domestic auto industry, it was about unions got a sweetheart deal, government shouldn't interfere with the marketplace, and the rest, non of which was relevant to if the bailout was successful for the reason it was done in the first place. It has become clear to me you are completely incapable of objectively analyzing the results of anything you dislike ideologically. If you are ideologically disposed to something, you will give the results a positive spin even if the spin is arguable and will do just the opposite as was the case with the bailout, making comments like it was temporarily successful, but will eventually fail when you have zero evidence toi support that argument.
will.15
03-14-12, 07:14 AM
That seventy dollars you keep citing is very misleading. Apparently you only read the Heritage Foundation. I coulld cite a link that explains why, but what would be the point? You are just going to ignore it and spin it the way you like because you hate unions. And you can call it favoritism all you want, it is still your ideology talking. And in this discussion you have been not arguing facts, as I said before, it is only ideology. And those labor costs it turns out are only ten percent of the cost of the car.
And are you really ignorant that even prior to the bailout, the year before, the unions that you hate so much had already made major concessions to get pension costs down?
You didn't quote what I was responding to. It was this:
Yeah, the whole "green jobs" thing is kind of absurd on its face. If the market could bear these jobs, we wouldn't need government intervention in the first place. And if the market can't bear them out and some sort of incentive (or compulsion) is involved, then those jobs will probably only be around as long as the incentive or compulsion is in place.
That was from 2009, and I don't see how your response is any more relevant to this than it was to the other thing. And anecdotally at least, this paragraph has been completely vindicated in the years since, as well; we've seen numerous "green" government-backed projects and companies go belly up. Solyndra is a downright scandal, another (whose name escapes me) went under a month or two later, and the Chevy Volt has had to cease production because of horrendous sales.
The logic, while perhaps not absolute, is quite sound: if these things were viable business strategies, government wouldn't have to compel them.
My comment which was very brief, was a logical reaction to your usual government shouldn't interfere with the market. You were the one that turned the discussion into a marathon with your super long responses.
Er, sorry, but I didn't blame you for the length of the discussions, I said they were off topic. If I write long posts, it's because most of your posts consist of giant laundry lists of claims. If you stop cramming your posts with assertions (most of which I find dubious), you won't get such long replies. Asking and answering direct questions would help keep them shorter. Otherwise I have to respond to every new claim you make while reminding you to answer all the questions you skipped over. They get longer because that second list grows throughout the discussion.
And like I said before, your comments in other threads had nothing to do with if the bailout succeeded in saving the domestic auto industry, it was about unions got a sweetheart deal, government shouldn't interfere with the marketplace, and the rest, non of which was relevant to if the bailout was successful for the reason it was done in the first place.
I've replied to all this already. It's bizarre to complain that my arguments--which are all about why the bailout is not a success--have nothing to do with how it's a success. Of course they aren't; because I don't think it was. Sorry if this is inconvenient, but complaining about it is basically just complaining about the fact that someone disagrees with you.
Let's try this: true or false? Political favoritism is a perfectly valid reason to dislike a government policy. True or false? It's reasonable to not like it when your government gambles with your money. True or false? Government interventions into markets can set precedent that effect future behavior. True or false? None of the previous three statements are restricted to people who have a free market ideology.
It has become clear to me you are completely incapable of objectively analyzing the results of anything you dislike ideologically. If you are ideologically disposed to something, you will give the results a positive spin even if the spin is arguable and will do just the opposite as was the case with the bailout, making comments like it was temporarily successful, but will eventually fail when you have zero evidence toi support that argument.
Except for all the, you know, evidence I keep presenting, your response to which is to tell me that I have no evidence, I guess.
You're spending way too much time trying to summarize the argument, and way too little actually having it. You say you want to "analyze the results," but you don't seem too keen on it when it actually happens.
That seventy dollars you keep citing is very misleading. Apparently you only read the Heritage Foundation.
Er, no, I didn't get it from the Heritage Foundation (though, let me guess: you don't have to listen to anything they say because...because...ideology!), actually. I saw it in several places while I was learning about the issue. One of them being the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html), whose only defense seems to be that it isn't all wages, and that some of it goes to retirees. Which doesn't refute anything, since the entire point is about the total costs paid to unions as a whole. Trying to say retiree benefits shouldn't count, for example, is ridiculous, because by that logic the compensation never gets counted because current workers are always paying for the retired ones.
Trying to make a sharp distinction between benefits and wages--even though both are compensation--is a very common rhetorical sleight of hand that often crops up in most discussions about union costs.
I coulld cite a link that explains why, but what would be the point? You are just going to ignore it and spin it the way you like because you hate unions. And you can call it favoritism all you want, it is still your ideology talking.
Uh, you know who else calls it favoritism? The Economist source you keep treating as the fifth Gospel of the Bailout. Would picking and choosing which parts of their op-ed you find reliable qualify as "spin" or "ideology"?
And in this discussion you have been not arguing facts, as I said before, it is only ideology.
It's kind of perplexing why you think this is either a) true or b) relevant. It's not true because things like political favoritism have nothing to do with ideology; all major political ideologies hate it. And not relevant because I could be an absolute crazy person and it wouldn't prevent you from explaining why the specific things I was saying were true or false.
I don't know what you think ideology is, but it isn't just raw, untethered belief floating around our minds. It is, almost invariably, a set of beliefs based on observation and deduction. If you ask me why I generally tout free markets, I can give you reasons and evidence to explain my position. Underneath ideology (ideally, at least), you just find facts and interpretations which can be disputed and analyzed like anything else.
So even if you want to assume I'm some rampant idealogue, nothing about that should stop you from engaging the issue. Unless, of course, trying to handwave the entire thing away by calling it "ideology" is just a convenient way to avoid having to do that.
And those labor costs it turns out are only ten percent of the cost of the car.
Which is about $800, which is more than enough to explain GM's problems: they sold over 9 million cars the year before the bailout. Some quick math shows that's well over $7 billion a year. Their losses that year were $4.4 billion. See?
And are you really ignorant that even prior to the bailout, the year before, the unions that you hate so much had already made major concessions to get pension costs down?
Nope, I'm well aware. But even that was only the "job banks" program. And by then, the companies were already doomed. Remember, the discussion started off being about the bailout, and it branched off into why the bailout was necessary, and the massive pension costs leading up to it are a huge part of it. Perhaps if the union had made this sort of concession much, much earlier, it would have saved the companies, but we'll never know, because they didn't.
will.15
03-14-12, 12:54 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by will.15 http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=797850#post797850)
And like I said before, your comments in other threads had nothing to do with if the bailout succeeded in saving the domestic auto industry, it was about unions got a sweetheart deal, government shouldn't interfere with the marketplace, and the rest, non of which was relevant to if the bailout was successful for the reason it was done in the first place.
I've replied to all this already. It's bizarre to complain that my arguments--which are all about why the bailout is not a success--have nothing to do with how it's a success. Of course they aren't; because I don't think it was. Sorry if this is inconvenient, but complaining about it is basically just complaining about the fact that someone disagrees with you.
Let's try this: true or false? Political favoritism is a perfectly valid reason to dislike a government policy. True or false? It's reasonable to not like it when your government gambles with your money. True or false? Government interventions into markets can set precedent that effect future behavior. True or false? None of the previous three statements are restricted to people who have a free market ideology.
Your arguments are not why the bailout wasn't a success. It is why you don't like it was done in the first place. Like I said before you are arguing ideology entirely, not facts. Let us rephrase your arguments so it is clearer: 1) Government shouldn't be making deals that benefit unions; 2) Government shouldn't be using our money to benefit one industry over another; 3) Government shouldn't interfere with the marketplace. There is nothing wrong in you believing that, but none of that is facts, they are ideological arguments divorced from showing why it is bad. They are bad to you for those reasons alone, just as rape is bad or running against a red light is.
will.15
03-14-12, 12:59 PM
Originally Posted by will.15 http://www.movieforums.com/community/images/buttons/lastpost.gif (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=797851#post797851)
And are you really ignorant that even prior to the bailout, the year before, the unions that you hate so much had already made major concessions to get pension costs down?
Nope, I'm well aware. But even that was only the "job banks" program.
No, it wasn't. They also agreed to a two tiered wage system.
Your arguments are not why the bailout wasn't a success. It is why you don't like it was done in the first place.
You're trying to make a distinction that does not exist. We seemed to agree earlier that, for something to be a success, it has to achieve its goals, it has to have meaningful goals to begin with, and it has to be a good option in light of the other options available. So when I argue that we had better options and it wasn't necessary, that's an argument about its success. And when I argue that it should have been done without showing overt political favoritism, that too is an argument about its success.
The idea that whether or not it should have been done at all is somehow outside of the topic of whether or not it was a success is bizarre. That'd be like me telling you the Iraq War was a "success" just because we did, in fact, topple Saddam Hussein. And every time you tried to talk about all the difficulties afterwards or why it wasn't necessary to start with, I brushed it off because those were not arguments about whether or not it was a success. But that'd be ridiculous, wouldn't it?
Like I said before you are arguing ideology entirely, not facts.
I'm arguing both, and you're making distinctions between the two that don't necessarily exist.
Let us rephrase your arguments so it is clearer:
Great idea. Here we go! Just make sure not to rephrase them in a way that changes the meaning...
1) Government shouldn't be making deals that benefit unions
...and already we're off to a bad start. Government shouldn't be making deals that show blatant political favoritism; that's not the same thing as saying they shouldn't ever do anything which happens to benefit unions.
2) Government shouldn't be using our money to benefit one industry over another
Pretty much. There might be some small exceptions but generally speaking, I believe this.
3) Government shouldn't interfere with the marketplace.
This might be too broad, depending on how you define "interfere." But I mostly agree with it.
There is nothing wrong in you believing that, but none of that is facts, they are ideological arguments divorced from showing why it is bad.
Uh, the three you listed are ideological arguments (though, again, that doesn't mean they aren't arguments about facts, or that they're not valid arguments), but then, you simply chose not to list the other arguments. For example, you left out 4) political favoritism is bad and 5) government should not be gambling with billions of dollars.. And, depending on how tortured the idea of "ideology" is, perhaps 6) it sets bad precedents to circumvent the bankruptcy process and bail out a failed business who lobbied hard for it. EDIT: And 7) it screws over legitimate creditors who had a claim on the company, including those who purchased the so-called secured debt.
So, your summary of my views seems to demonstrate that when you leave out the fact-based arguments, there aren't any fact-based arguments left. Fascinating.
They are bad to you for those reasons alone, just as rape is bad or running against a red light is.
Absolutely not. Rape is self-evidently bad. If someone does not have the sense to see that, then they are a moral idiot and not someone I have enough common ground to even discuss the issue with. If I thought supporting the auto bailout were a mistake of a similarly fundamental nature, I wouldn't bother arguing with you about it.
I do not think bailouts are self-evidently bad. I think people who share many of my beliefs can easily and honestly come to support them. That's why I think it's worth arguing about: because I don't think you actually like political favoritism, and I don't think you actually believe it's invalid to dislike the government gambling with taxpayer money. That's why I tried to cut through all this by asking direct questions (absolutely none of which were answered):
"true or false? Political favoritism is a perfectly valid reason to dislike a government policy. True or false? It's reasonable to not like it when your government gambles with your money. True or false? Government interventions into markets can set precedent that effect future behavior. True or false? None of the previous three statements are restricted to people who have a free market ideology."
No, it wasn't. They also agreed to a two tiered wage system.
You're right, I forgot about that. Lucky for me all the rest of the post still applies.
will.15
03-14-12, 01:36 PM
I an not going to apply to all that all at once anymore. Too time consuming. I'll take it a little at a time and pick my shots. There is so much there that is so wrong. And much of it is repetitive. I will respond to some of the rest of it when I am in the mood.
As always, the degree to which it's repetitive is a direct reflection of how often you repeat things I've already addressed and which were never answered or incorporated.
If you must continue to pick and choose what to respond to, I'd urge you to prioritize them this way:
1) The True-or-False questions at the end of post #152 (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=797913).
2) The first two paragraphs in post #152.
3) The rest.
Mountaineer
03-14-12, 10:32 PM
..........don't even get me started.
FILMFREAK087
10-30-12, 09:07 PM
The problem with the medical industry is just that, it's an industry. Rendering the means to sustain life to a privilege based on economic status is counter to any civilized society's ethical fabric. Reducing human life itself to cost-effective, profit based system only serves to resolve the value of life to dollars and cents.
No, that's the problem with reality. Cost is a way of representing resources, which we have a limited amount of in all conceptions of reality, capitalist, socialist, communist, whatever. We have a limited amount of medical technology, manpower, time, expertise, etc. Cost has to be grappled with no matter what; you just call it something different without money. Like rationing. That's cost-effectiveness under a different name, but it's the exact same principle.
To say this is "counter to any civilized society's ethical fabric" is to say that there's never been any such thing as a civilized society, and never will be. And perhaps that's what you think. But that's the famous argument for capitalism, after all: that it's the worst system except all the others. It only fails to measure up if you compare it to some utopian notion, rather than the actual alternatives.
Hey, remember all that flack Romney got for saying (except he didn't really say it) "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt"? Well, it just went bankrupt (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/us/detroit-files-for-bankruptcy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) anyway.
Also, inb4 "but Detroit the city is different than the auto industry!" Yeah, I know, but it clearly puts the lie to the idea that the town could be "saved" and avoid the kinds of tough choices Romney and others said were inevitable.
This is yet another example of the sober political opinion based on economic reality being proven right in the end.
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