You're splitting hairs with the EU. They have a larger economy total. Call it the same size if you like, they aren't irrelevant. I'm not even sure what argument you were trying to make in that post you're quoting. You might as well have said they don't matter because I said so. The entire point of the EU is that it doesn't have a definitive leader. Anyway, that's not what I really wanted to argue about. Good, so you agree with that then? Could you define this? You're not talking about a progressive tax system apparently. Are you talking about health care? Are you talking about social security? Are you talking about unions? Worker rights? If you're saying giving people piles of money for no discernible reason other than that they're poor isn't a good idea, then ok, that much is probably true. Like I said in an earlier post we're not doing as bad as many make it out to be. However, comparing ourselves to much of the world means little to me. A lot of it is a shit hole. Let's not set the bar so low. As for not understanding microeconomics - This is just plain wrong. Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality I'm not saying read the whole thing, but at least skim it if you want to try and make this claim. Also, if you do want to make that claim state your case. Thus far you haven't and none of the data or experts agree with you (unless you consider people like Rush Limbaugh an expert). Buying politicians is a separate issue only to a point. It's buying politicians in the first place that has led to so many of the policies encouraging income inequality.
So your reply is to just post a parent wikipedia article? You keep shooting an arrow and painting a target around it and changing your argument. I said income gaps dont make a huge difference relative to marginal utility and quality of life, in the United States, which I thought we were talking about?. I didnt say income inequality wasn't a thing or didnt have consequences on job production, creating monopolies, etc. I agree with increasing taxes, but I dont agree with increased social welfare programs, which are essentially the output of the income redistribution programs. Welfare doesnt work. Obamacare is basically garbage. Premiums went up after its implementation. You want to see the effects of the government curbing income inequality with government distribution? Again, check out Greece. Despite your insinuation, I'm not even a Republican.
Since we're talking about economics, I'll throw this out there: The necessary result of successful capitalism (or supercapitalism, if you will) is Oligopoly.
When have I changed my argument? Come on dude... I can post 50 more sources if you like. I don't think it's necessary. We are talking about the United States then right? So what about the post I just made regarding growth relative to inequality? That's the thing - you're dismissing my post which used actual data, as well as 'a parent wikipedia article' that also uses real world data. So... what is your case for income inequality not mattering? Greece? They failed because they spent well beyond their means, something I've been railing against the entire thread. Nor, have I once said anything to the effect that we should we spend more than we could possibly cover. Income equality has fuck all to do with Greece falling to pieces. Sorry, you don't get to discount a hundred years of historical evidence from dozens of nations because of a small country that collapsed for reasons wholly irrelevant to the point at hand. Obamacare is a disaster, no argument there. Obama's problem is that he tried to make everyone happy at the same time. You can't try to revolutionize a system while letting people have the old system if they prefer that instead. You have to go for public health properly or not bother. Regarding that though, pointing out Obama care's failures isn't very reasonable. The verdict has long since been out. Do you want me to list the nations that spend less than we do on health care yet get substantially better results? You can discount the numbers all you like, but they are what they are. There's a reason the entire rest of the first world moved forward while we're still mired down in paranoia of mass doctor emigrations and the government owning your soul. I'm not a democrat or republican either. I give zero fucks what political party someone is. Edit: Here take a look. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator...pi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=desc Yep, we spend nearly double or more than double per capita than the rest of the first world on our health care. They all had public health care from 2010-2014. We did not. Now go take a look at life expectancy, amount of treatment, quality of treatment, consumer satisfaction, etc etc etc and report back. Then tell me why again Sanders is stupid and 'extremist' for pushing for public health care.
One more thing and then I promise I'll try to stop hijacking this thread. Let's say the Nazis did X. The Nazis were some evil X doing motherfuckers, but wait, does that have anything to do with X? Is whether or not they did X at all relevant to whether we should or not? I make this point because I know the whole 'BUT GREECE' shit is going to get blown out of proportion over the next couple years. You can't look at things in a vacuum, and it doesn't help anyone to only look at a snippet of data relative to the whole while making a bogus correlation and ignoring everything else.
So you ask for a response, I give you one, then you change the subject or say it's not something you wanted to discuss. I appreciate the dismissive argument framing, but I'm not sure what you're trying to discuss at this point. 50 more sources proving what? That income inequality is a thing? I already agreed with it. Again, you are missing the point entirely. I said it doesn't have a big impact on individual quality of life. Heres some sources for you: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=BLI That's compiled from multiple indexes. Quality of life has gone up while the income gap has increased. Im not saying correlation is causation, but it's certainly not the inverse. And I am completely right on Europe. It's not "because I said so." It's a matter of fact that they've been losing ground for over a decade. Investment banks have lost market shares, the Euro, while trading above its introductory rate, consistently trades lower and is held far less than the USD. You want other examples than Greece because you don't like that point? Okay. Ireland, Austria, and Portugal all required multiple IMF bailouts. Germany is the strongest economy in Europe and is can't get rid of it's exports. Unemployment is consistently high across the continent especially in Belgium and Netherlands until very recently. Overall in Europe it was 11% last year, Spain almost hit 25%. Want to know why? Reread my other post I quoted. My explanation regarding dichotomous relationships between the East and the West is accurate. The industry dried up and workers moved west. Now you have an abundant workforce with barely enough jobs to keep the economies going. Feel free to keep banging your head against the wall over arguments I'm not making though.
Are you high? No shit quality of life has gone up. Let's try this again. Economic growth stagnates when income inequality increases. Guess what? People live better now than they did in the 300s too. Want to guess what that has to do with income equality? I have no idea how you compare the two in a vacuum. I don't get how you trash Obama Care, ignore what I just said, and then say I'm being dismissive? You spend most of your post talking about this pointless EU vs America shit. Ok. Were they irrelevant when the American auto industry collapsed? Maybe a teensy bit relevant? Whatever - I don't want to go back and forth on something so chest thumping and stupid so this is my last comment on the matter. Just know though that when people are talking about Americans being idiots this is exactly what they are referring to. The fact that you included Canada and the UK as 'mattering', our closest allies, while writing everyone else off just makes it all the more preposterous. I'm going to be very clear here. - You said income equality does not matter. I showed you why it does matter, with parallels to economic growth. You threw out a conglomeration of statistics. Which one are you even talking about? By the way, according to that site household wealth in America is 16x what it is Norway. I was about to look into how they calculated this nonsense, but when it's obviously wrong who cares? - You trashed public health care/obama care. I showed you why you're wrong. You ignored that. You kept talking about Europe vs America for some reason. - You said income equality has nothing to do with the rich buying off politicians. I then explained how they are, in fact, related. You then ignored this. - If you go back and read my first, second, third, and whatever post I'm not sure you'll find it's not me changing the argument. Are you referring to this? If so, could you be more specific? Or are you saying they got bail outs because their income was too equal or they taxed the rich too much, or that they had public health care or what? I never said take all the money and put it in endless do nothing social welfare programs. I haven't said that once in the entire thread. So who again is banging their head on the wall responding to arguments that were never made? What the fuck do you mean by redistribution of income? Are we talking about Greece and Portugal? Are we talking about Canada and the UK? Germany? What problem do you have with the solutions I suggested, the comparisons I made, or the solutions made by Bernie Sanders, although I happen to not agree with him on a few issues. I get you made this comparison between Sanders and some glorification of Western Europe, but I never said that, not to my knowledge either has he(although maybe he has, it's not like I've read through everything the man has said). *On most standard of living rankings we tend to consistently fall below countries making less money than us per capita. I don't think we should, but again it was never my point that we should do what people in whogivesafuckistan do. Either show me how income equality is irrelevant to economic growth (something I would call 'relevant'), how our health care system is better and more efficient than public health care systems, or anything else in my first post regarding Sanders, or how anything in subsequent posts is wrong that pertains.to what I actually said. You want to shit all over a political view? Go for it, that is the point of this thread as I see it, but do say what about it is inaccurate. Don't tell me things suck in Austria therefore... something not sure what I said is wrong.
I have a habit of crossing the line in these threads. My bad, but Juice, be specific. You began with talking about Sanders like he's some fringe fruitcake, apparently with regards to my thoughts on his views. What do you think isn't true? I need something better than 'shit sucks in Austria', or 'redistribution is bad'.
So about Obamacare and public health: One thing to consider with all of these arguments is that no one is going to say "yeah, take away more of my money through taxes for the betterment of society because I don't need as much money lying around". The money others have has been earned and they did not get to that point in life by being laissez-faire economically. At the same time, people working part-time or lower wage jobs deserve to have the same access to care as everyone else. From what I understand, Obamacare is trying to follow the goals of HealthyPeople2020 and The World Health Organization by emphasizing primary prevention of health risks. Infant mortality rates, smoking, and teen pregnancy are some trackable data points which experts believe show how well countries, states, counties, and cities are doing. As an example: Infant Mortality Rate (per 1,000 births) Afghanistan was the highest at 117.23/1,000 US 6.16 Poland 6.19 Russia 7.08 Greece 4.78 UK 4.44 Japan 2.13 (#2 in the world) India 43.9 China 14.79 Smoking (% amongst men 15+ in 2012) Indonesia was the highest at 71% US 21% Poland 34.9 Russia 60.3 Greece 54.3 UK 21.8 Japan 36.3 India 22.8 China 49 Teen Pregnancy (per 1,000 births in 2013) Niger had the highest as 205/1,000 US 30 Poland 12 Russia 26 Greece 11 UK 26 Japan 5 India 32 China 9 There is a lot of room for interpretation and how to use these statistics, I know, but if people buy into the fact that by limiting some lifestyle choices (pregnancy. smoking) complications of those choices will not have such an effect on the resources available. Take smoking: your lung capability will be compromised at some point no matter what. If you don't smoke then there is no need for money to be spent of nicotine patches, inhalers, nebulizers, oxygen therapy, and new COPD medications hitting the market. There will also (hopefully) be a decrease in hospital admissions for exacerbation of impaired lung capability. Hopefully it is possible to get the public to buy into the fact that by providing services now to as many people as possible will lower the burden of Medicare/Medicaid down the line and lighten the load upon the economy. It is not a perfect system and admittedly those in the field right now are learning how to best use the system and what its limits are, but to my understanding the operating theory behind Obamacare is to enable tax dollars to be used for other endeavors
Regarding public health care - spending per capita in this country on health care isn't just high, it's off the charts high. We're practically in our own category. This is made more embarrassing by the fact that we make more per capita than nearly all the industrialized nations spending a lower percentage of their income for better results. You would think this obvious slap you in the face fact would shut people up about scary communist health care and absurd stories of how we could never afford it, but I guess people like to cling to these things like their religious stories. If reality was going to sway them it would have happened a long time ago.
Oh look, CNN is now letting advertisers pay for professionally produced content that looks like CNN editorial, but is really advertisement. http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/7/cnn-to-broadcast-corporate-propaganda-as-news.html
http://news.byu.edu/archive15-jun-workingpoor.aspx This'll piss you off: "Most of America’s poor have jobs, study finds"
I have a few thoughts on people that have problems with a minimum wage hike. A low minimum wage makes people go on public assistance. Walmart, McDonalds, etc. are having their labor costs subsidized by the government. If you don't want "welfare queens" (and seriously, fuck you if you use this phrase), force a higher minimum wage. Maybe then, the money going towards welfare can be used on actual social services like job training and education instead of gubment cheese. Raising the minimum wage would actually help the economy. If your business goes down the shitter because you have to pay your employees more, then you have failed as a business owner. You mean to tell me that now that there's more of a pie available to you that you aren't able to increase your revenue? Make way for a business that can.
If wages were adjusted for inflation properly than by 2015 the minimum wage in either of our countries was supposed to be in the neighbourhood of $19 to $21 per hour. All the people in charge failed everyone at everything.
This article is a bit misleading. The larger companies that advocate hiking the minimum wage are already paying above it. It wouldn't make much sense otherwise- if they thought wages should increase they can do that on their own any time they want. A minimum wage hike does increase purchasing power, and I think it should be done. People deserve to get paid a living wage. However, Minimum wage in general is somewhat of a blunt instrument. Minimum wage in Des Moines, Iowa does not have the same purchasing power as it would in Manhattan, which is why Im surprised that its even a Federal issue at all. Although the article quotes Gap Inc., the biggest issue is larger companies will wield question economies of scale and start reducing the workforce or do what Walmart does and make its employee's part-time so they don't have to pay benefits. The other fear is that a wage hike will be offset to the consumer with higher prices of goods and services. This will happen in the short term, but will (or should) even out over time. The last numbers I read on it (Ill try and find a source) said that where state-implemented hikes have been implemented, fast food and small commodity prices have increased. So before anyone decides to mash their keyboard and go berzerk, I support increasing the minimum wage. It just wont be as pretty as some pretend its going to be.
It seems to me that a blunt instrument is better than none at all. I would rather see some people raised out of poverty than none at all. If me paying an extra quarter for a Big Mac means that the burger flipper can feed his or her child(ren), fine. Making people not poor means there are less people doing shitty things to each other in order to survive. So if a person works at Walmart or at a fast food joint they're retarded? Is that the reason why people work those jobs and not because of things like a terrible education system? Why discount a swath of people based on a bunch of stereotypes? I guess the real question is, why is the general thinking of unskilled workers is that they're useless parasites on society? Never mind that these are people too, with their own families and problems, and have had the deck stacked against them from birth.
Increasing the minimum wage would be a great way to price poor and under-educated people and teens out of more jobs. If higher prices on cheap goods and lower employment among minorities in particular is your goal, then wholeheartedly support an increase in the minimum wage. Clutch wasn't saying unskilled or low skilled workers are retarded or worthless. At least I assume he wasn't. Just that they aren't productive enough to warrant that much money. Probably because they lack experience, which is why they need the opportunity for low paying work in the first place.
This is a possibility, but any substantive measure where higher wages have been introduced at the state level have yet to be seen. From what I've read, teen employment in such positions is down anywhere from 2-5% depending on what metric you read. There hasn't been a meaningful drop in employment of minorities, at least not yet. That kind of change typically takes an entire market cycle (15-20 years) to see results.