From an ethical standpoint, how is a direct transfer different then using an indirect mechanism such a minimum wage as a method of transferring economic wellbeing?

I don't understand why you need an economy to be capable of creating a high wage such that the minimum wage is suitable for making people more equal. It seems that you are course of action with out any assurance that it is the best way to reach your desired goal, whatever that may be.

What is a "free market" and why is it desirable.

You are making an argument for government intervention in free trade. I am arguing against.

But from your posts - I can easily tell you have limited knowledge when it comes to economics.

You're accusing me of not reading your posts when it seems you have not read mine.

FYI - Bush actually vetoed the bill.

I would highly recommend you read:

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

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"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
~Thomas Jefferson

"There is Still No Such Thing As a Fair Tax"

I'm not looking for full equality, but to narrow down the gap between the wealthy and the poor. The top 1% of the US people makes more than the bottom 40%.

It's sad that so many 'enlightened' and 'caring' people not only feel so self-important that the world should conform to what They want it to be, but that most of them are so narrow-minded that they cannot conceive of a mechanism to achieve their 'lofty' goals beyond one that's been around for millenia - theft.

Improving the lot of the poor is not a matter of undercutting their incentive to improve their lot via welfare or by keeping the most needy out of the labor pool via the minimum wage. And 'levelling the playing field' by punishing and/or stealing from the rich is hardly fair and equitable.

1) There will always be rich and poor. I won't belabor this point since 'ending poverty' hasn't been a stated goal here as it is in many such discussions, but it's a point that many naive social engineer wannabes are surprisingly ignorant of, and thus worth at least mention in passing.

2) Provide the poor with incentives to improve. Our government-charity programs need a massive overhaul, ideally culminating in their complete abolition. If re-privatizing the charity industry is for whatever reason not an option, it at least needs to change from 'handouts for life' to 'handouts for a limited, presumeably pre-defined time'.

3) Provide the poor with opportunities. The most obvious of these is education, but it needs to be addressed in a goal-oriented manner rather than a process-oriented one. Education does not mean warehousing children until they're 18, especially if that entails ham-stringing those who want an education with those who only want to be disruptive. Improve gifted programs, especially in the worst areas, rather than throwing bad money after worse trying to educate those who are resource drains, especially those who are drains by choice. Improve GED and other options for those who decide late that maybe an education isn't such a bad idea after all.

4) Provide the poor with opportunities. For those who don't learn well in the classroom or who haven't finished yet, allow them to work at market wages. In some cases, it will instill a work ethic and give them a jump start towards becoming productive, (more) self-sufficient citizens. In some cases, it will provide an incentive to go back and get a better education. And in some cases, it will still be a failure, but having some positive outcomes is better than having no positive outcomes.

5) Provide the poor with resources. Too often, the poor are unable to take advantage of educational opportunities or to find, keep, and/or advance job opportunities because they are pre-occupied with child-care issues. (The same applies to the whole socio-economic spectrum, but the impacts are more significant at the low end.) Charity, especially governmental charity, should include requirements for birth control, allowing the poor to allocate resources towards improving themselves or that of the children they do have.

6) Provide the poor with resources. For better or worse, there are limits to the available funds and such available to help the poor. Charity, especially governmental charity, should include requirements for birth control, allowing what resources Are available to provide better assistance to a smaller pool of people.

7) Provide the poor with opportunities. For better or worse, poor are often poor for a reason - neglected education, poor work ethic, limited availability, etc. limit their employability and their income. One common but counter-productive option is to price the less-employable out of the market altogether with minimum wage laws. A better option has already been addressed here, improving their employability. Another is to improve wages by reducing the labor pool at the lower end of the spectrum. The most equitable and socially acceptable way to do this is for charities, especially governmental charities, to include requirements for birth control, resulting in a smaller number of people chasing the lower-tier jobs and thus raising the market wage for those jobs.


If one accepts the assertion that wealth disparity is a bad thing, one also needs to address the opposite end of the spectrum. Again, rather than promote socially destructive behaviors like theft and the resultant economically unproductive reaction of wealth manipulation to avoid such theft, we should look at 'outside the box' options similar to those in the 'help the poor' list. Under our current tax structure, there are significant incentives for the poor to have additional children and dilute their resources, and no incentives for the rich to do so. This should be reversed. Rather than allowing for a set-dollar-amount income deduction for additional dependents that itself phases out at higher income levels, there should be a tax-rate deduction. Reducing one's tax rate from 35% to 34% on a million-dollar income provides Buffy and Fluffy Moneybags a $10K/yr incentive to eventually split their inheritance two (or more) ways rather than concentrate their family wealth with one heir. It also reduces the amount of 'undue influence' they can bring to bear in support of any given child. If Mr Moneybags decides to throw all his weight behind Jr's senate campaign, Jr stands a good chance of winning. If he calls in all his chips to keep Jr out of jail for some misdeed, Jr is quite likely to walk. If Mr Moneybag's social and financial resources are divided among multiple children, this creates a more equitable 'battleground' for the children of less-well-heeled parents.

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Today's forecast: Government corruption.

Tomorrow's forecast: 100% chance of more 'politics as usual'

Maybe it's finally time to vote Libertarian

What you're doing is pointing out that our current policies have bad results, and failing to distinguish between them and what I am suggesting, merely on the grounds that both constitute "government intervention in free trade." You need to make a case that all government intervention in free trade will have similar bad results, not merely point to the bad results from the current policies, since I don't approve of those policies either.

[Yawn.] I hear that all the time from free-market ideologues. It's not even remotely true, but since I know that they confuse their own ideology with fact, and hence disagreement with that ideology with lack of knowledge, I don't let it get to me.

Tell you what. Give me a good description of the following, and then we'll see whether you and I are in the same ballpark when it comes to knowledge of economics:

1) Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage in international trade. Extra points if you can give us the unstated assumption behind this theory, which explains why it isn't working today.

2) The effect of real wages on consumer demand. Extra points if you can state this in terms of the effect on the economy in general of more equal versus less equal distribution of income.

3) The difference between the Austrian school of economics and that of John Maynard Keynes. Extra points if you can do so from the viewpoint of each, assuming that each is correct while you're explaining it.

Get back to me on this, and we'll go from there.

Why do you think its unfair to inherit wealth, or to earn more wealth than someone else?

For example, take two people who own farms. One farms 40 hours a week and comes away with the equivelant of $1000 in produce. Another farms for 80 hours a week and comes away with $2000 of produce. Thats a significant gap in wealth. Is it unfair that the second farmer is rich and the first is poor?

What if the first farmer spends all his money and passes on none to his son, and the second spends half and gives his son $1000. Is it unfair that the son of the second now has $1000 and the first has $0?

How would you remedy this?

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"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

-Thomas Jefferson

Can I just have answers to my question and suggestions to make the idea better? Please stop arguing over free trade here, argue in a new thread.

As I explained in the other thread you started, you cannot separate the question of free trade from that of wealth disparity, because free trade and the migration of capital are the ways capitalists are using to get around the measures enacted in advanced economies to narrow wealth gaps. Equally, you can't start a thread like that and expect to exclude free-market ideologues who oppose any regulation of business for the sake of workers or consumers. That just isn't a reasonable expectation.

Any thread you begin is going to migrate to logically related subjects like those. If it migrates to something totally unconnected, which also sometimes happens, that's different, but you seem to be trying to exclude subjects that are crucial to understanding the one you started with.

Then how about instead of arguing with him, make one long statement, countering the arguments you know he's going to make, connecting free trade to narrowing the economic classes clearly.

Very well. I'm also going to incorporate government labor policy here and abroad, because that, too, is an inseparable subject and determines whether free trade agreements are a good idea in individual cases. I'm also going to make a diversion by answering one of my questions, about Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage, which is the economic rationale behind free trade in the first place. Wealth gaps are complex, and we need to understand why they happen if we are to understand the best ways of narrowing them.

From the industrialization of the U.S., which got fully under way after the Civil War but had its fitful beginnings well before that, and was in high gear by the turn of the 20th century, the country was gripped by labor wars. This happened because the government acted mostly in service to capital, and labor rights were suppressed, while immigration policy was set so as to ensure a large labor pool to keep wages low. When I say that labor rights were suppressed, I mean both that there were no requirements regarding work hours and payment of overtime, minimum wages, or safe working conditions, as we have today, and that attempts to form labor unions were repressed as well. Companies were allowed to fire workers attempting to form unions, and even to hire private mercenaries (in the form of agents of "detective agencies") to physically assault strikers. In some cases, the local police and even the National Guard were used to suppress unions.

As a result, the expanded wealth produced by industrialized America mostly went into the hands of capitalists, and wealth gaps grew enormously wide. Because this meant there wasn't enough money in the hands of consumers to buy the goods that were produced, the economy went into periodic panics. We call these "recessions" today, but what we have today is only a pale ghost of what used to occur in the bad old days.

At that time, "free trade" was not a conservative idea but a liberal one. Capitalists didn't want free trade, they wanted protection from foreign competitors in the form of high tariffs. The theory of comparative advantage argued that free trade would benefit the economy as a whole. (Which still left it not necessarily benefiting the bottom line of specific capitalists, of course.) Here's the Wikipedia article on the subject:

Comparative advantage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This holds true in some cases, including those all nations faced in 1817. However, there is an unstated assumption behind the theory, namely that while goods could cross borders freely (assuming government cooperation in that crossing), capital would remain nationalized. A consumer might choose between English and Portuguese cloth, but an English investor could choose only between producing English wine and English cloth, not between producing English cloth and Portuguese cloth. The assumption was unstated because it was universally true. Lacking modern information technology, migration of capital on a scale such as we have today would have been impossible.

Fast-forward to the 1930s. At that time, under the pressure of the Great Depression, the U.S. government changed radically in its approach to the labor wars, and came down heavily on the side of labor instead of capital. Unions were encouraged rather than discouraged and most heavy industries were unionized in the late 1930s. Eight-hour work days became the norm. Laws and regulations were enacted protecting a right to a safe workplace. And relief measures such as unemployment insurance and Social Security were enacted. After World War II, when the economy went back to producing consumer goods instead of military equipment, the result was an incredible surge of productivity and wealth, which was distributed much more broadly and fairly than had been the case in the pre-Depression economy. Industrial workers, for the first time in history, made a middle-class income and sent their children to college.

Fast-forward again to the 1980s. The development of information technology and the change back to capital-friendly policies by the Reagan administration together conspired to reverse the earlier gains. Capital could now migrate freely overseas, which it could not in Ricardo's time. Rather than frontal-assaulting the labor-friendly traditions in U.S. law, capitalists and their government enablers did an end-run around them by moving their production facilities overseas, producing the same products much more cheaply in foreign countries that still had oppressed labor forces. New service industries arose to employ the unemployed factory workers in the U.S., but at lower rates of pay, and this also affected the wage growth in existing service positions, so that real wages were drawn down across much of the economy.

Because the unstated assumption behind the comparative advantage theory is being violated, free trade no longer benefits the national economy as a whole the way it would in other circumstances. And THAT is the reason, or the main reason, why we now have expanding income and wealth gaps.

The solution to it is to recognize that free trade is only a good idea between nations that are operating with the same rule books w/r/t labor rights. At the same time, we need to reverse the Reagan administration reversal of government favoritism from capital back to labor. These two things will do much more to narrow income gaps than any amount of crude and direct transfer of wealth.

Oh, and return to a more progressive tax structure. That as well.

You havent answered my questions yet. You assumed there was a problem with a wealth gap. I wasnt to know why that is.

__________________
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

-Thomas Jefferson

What a steaming pile of horseshit.

Work hard, get more. That's the name of the game...

I'll answer, if you don't mind.

The problem with a wealth gap isn't that it exists, but its size, and also a certain ramification of it that may or may not also exist. Currently, it does.

The size of the gap creates a problem with the performance of the economy. An industrial economy is market-driven. It depends on sufficient consumer demand to absorb the goods produced. When consumer demand slacks, goods are unsold, productivity is wasted, and profits are lost, and the economy goes into recession.

Consumer demand, in turn, depends on money in consumers' pockets available to spend. And that depends on the wealth produced by society being distributed broadly -- on relatively small wealth gaps, in other words. It depends on high wages, and high standards of living for as many people as possible.

When wealth gaps are low, the economy does well. When they are high, the economy does poorly. That's the first problem with the wealth gap.

The second problem involves liberty. Low wages mean that people are under the control of their employers to a degree that high wages mean they are not. A worker who is well paid can afford to leave a job and go for a time without working, which means there is less abuse he will have to tolerate. He can also afford to cut back his hours for a time, seek extra schooling, and improve his situation. A worker who is not well paid can't do any of this, and has less freedom. In general, the higher the gap in wealth between the rich and the bulk of society, the less freedom that society enjoys.

For both of these reasons, we need to be concerned about widening of wealth gaps. A society can tolerate some inequality of wealth. But at present, we have too much, and need to narrow the gap by distributing wealth more broadly.

Im more concerned with the OP and why he thinks its fundamentally unfair for one person to have more of something than another.

__________________
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

-Thomas Jefferson

What a rampant over simplification.

Maybe you should build a time machine and lecture the slaves that built the pyramids on how they should work harder so they can become more than slaves.

Hard work is only one of many variables that will determine a person position in society a financial status.

'work hard' what a joke more like - work hard and have the finances to go to college, and be in the right place and the right time, and happen to fit in the with company culture, and pick a field in high demand, and start your own business and prey their is no recession

luck and chance are the bigger part of most people's lives