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Where the Conservatives are Right

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Ant:
In regards to government spending,

The argument presented is of course the traditional liberal argument for big government... "if only we could spend this money properly so much could be done."  The problem is, the government is NEVER going to be good at spending its money effectively.  To think that the government could solve all sorts of social problems is an ideological pipedream.  The supporters of increased government spending, often liberals who want government to create institutions that improve society and solve social ills, never end up achieving the goals they actually set out to do.  What makes things worse, is our political system is structured so that the ineffective institutions we create to "fix" things NEVER die when they prove ineffective.  They just go on living, doing nothing, and consuming resources.  It's a matter of fact, once someone creates a government institution, that institution will be there indefinitely.   In the business world, things operate a lot differently, ineffective organizations die and are replaced by more effective ones.  Organizations that don't serve a purpose are forced to repurpose themselves of close shop.  This doesn't happen in government, and never will.  So what is the end result?  The "do gooders' push for increased government spending to solve x, y, and z problem.  The government increases its revenue, creates some institution to try to solve problems x, y, and z.  None of these problems get solved and the government never gives the money back.  They just keep on spending it.  Government revenues continually grow, and you end up where we are now.  The government is collecting near record revenues, but little is getting solved, and liberals are still saying "if only the government wasn't so corrupt, if only it spent money on the important things, if only...."   

I don't doubt the intentions of those who want to fix societies problems.  I just doubt their understanding of governments ability to actually do such a thing.  In the business world results are what justify spending.  Only in politics can we justify spending with intentions.... "I want to help these people" ok lets spend more money  "I want to improve education" ok here is some cash. "I want to save the middle east from tyranny" ok here's a 300 billion.  We need to stop spending money just because we "wish we could improve things."  There are things government can improve, but the traditional liberal, IMO, way overestimates governments ability to do good.  If government could do good things wouldn't be as fucked up as they are now.

On Minimum Wages:

"In the county which I live in there are some parts which are essentially small villages which are very cut off and for that reason of course jobs are scarce. For some people, moving to the city, just isnt an option, whether that is because they want to stay close by to support their parents. or indeed they simply can not afford to move straight into accomodation in the cities. Now with that being said, and with extortionate bills encountered on a constant basis. how are they expected to get by without a minimum wage?"

Keep point here.  You said "jobs are scarce."  Forcing employers to raise wages will make jobs even scarcer.  This is at the core of the problem with advocating minimum wages.  You can't force people out of poverty by killing off the incentives for businesses to operate in their area.  Poverty will always exist, minimum wages IMO creates more poverty.  It doesn't alleviate it.  Case in point.  Manufacturing jobs are getting to the point where they barely exist in the US.  They're declining every year.  A lot of people who were traditional blue collar workers are now completely displaced in American society.  They can't just make a jump from manufacturing to another job sector when their job left and went over seas.  But why did their job go overseas?  Lower labor costs.  I happen to work in the manufacturing sector of our economy.  I can tell you from my experience.  Unless you can automate a process to the point where labor is a very small percentage of cost, you can't make that product in the US.  When you force employers to raise wages you also give employers incentives to spend money trying to automate and reduce their head count.  This is a fact. 

This isn't necesarily a bad thing. when employers can figure out how to use one person to do the job of five thats called improved productivity.  When employers improve their productivity they can also improve the wages of their workers.  For example, company x opens and uses 100 employees to make 10,000 widgets each year.  Company Y opens a few years later, but uses advanced manufacturing processes (better machinery and IT system) to make 10,000 of the same widgets but using only 50 employees.  Company Y sells their widgets at a much lower price to gain market share, but also pays their employees a somewhat higher wage than company X.  You might doubt this will happen, but often it is the case.  Maybe you think Company Y is greedy, but even if they are, they just made labor a much less significant cost. They may decide its in their own best interests to raise their wages slightly above company X so that they can recruiter higher quality talent.  They can afford to do this because they have lower costs.  End result: the widgets costs less, and employees for company Y are making more.  Of course, company x may have to lay people off, but thats the way the market works. 

IMO, its much better to have this progression happen naturally, as it does happen.  Than to force it to happen unnaturally, as it does when politicians force employers to raise wages.  The latter is much more disruptive to the economy.

Another example from real life.... In my town, my company pays labor between 8.00 and 10.00 to start.  We're already way above the minimum wage.  Why? Because we automated to the point where labor is an insignficant cost, and also because we need to be more selective in who we hire.  Being slightly above minimum wage allows us that luxury.  Anyways, recently Target Corporation moved into my town and opened a distribution center where they needed to fill 1,000 new positions.  They didnt have time to mess around with staffing so they immediately posted that they are offering a minimum starting salary of $12.50 with some jobs offering even better starting pay.  Why did they do this?  They realized if they were going to staff their facility they would need high quality motivated people, and they would probably need to steal people from existing employers.  To steal employees from my company, they had to offer substantially higher starting pay. 

So whats the story... the market is willing to pay people well above minimum wage without being forced by government to do so.  When the market pays at the minimum wage level its because thats all companies can afford to offer employees given their current economic situation.  Of course, we often forget that employees have the right to refuse to accept substandard pay when we fight to force corporations to raise wages. 

Primo:
There needs to be another Party formed. No bipartisanship. They need to take the most intellegent people and run them for public office. The intellegent people make the world better. Not a government who has an idiot in power just because of financial status.

virtuoso:
Again if we go back to England, I can show you that your argument does not hold up. Fundamentally you are saying there should be complete deregulation, allow the market to set the wage level. Yet in England the national minimum wage was only introduced in 1999. Now lets take the grocery sector as an illustration, before 1999, the major corporations including Tesco and Sainsburys were well underway in their plans to totally decimitate the competition through ruthless pricing strategies. The smaller independently owned grocery sector, our traditional corner shops just could not compete with companies who were able to offer their customers such a vastly lower price through economies of scale.

Not only was the threat to genuine competition coming from pricing strategies, but also from acquisitions, which in turn leads to downsizing. Further increasing the power of Sainsburys and Tesco, which I have been informed are owned by the same americans but that is a seperate issue. With competition so stifled and a select few corporations able to wield such ridiculous power, then it is only right for a minumum wage to be imposed. Therefore, before the minumum wage was introduced these supermarkets were paying whatever they could get away with. As the type of work is unskilled, they were able to get away with paying very very little because supply of such labour far outstripped demand. Left to the market forces, this position would remain completely unchanged. Indeed, we can all see in which direction this country is heading, the outsourcing of I.T jobs continues unabaited and so the role of groceries becomes ever more prominent. So whilst you may be all for the free market, what you are actually advocating would lead to people living in deeper poverty than they are now.

We in this country are being taxed to the hilt, profiteerting knows no bounds and without the minimum we would be working as complete slaves. Furthermore in the case of america as I have said above 3 trillion dollars is unaccounted for in the defence budget. Your country is being run by the most criminal and corrupt individuals on the face of this planet and is being hollowed out. The problem does not lie with a shitty ass minimum wage.

Ant:
I really disagree with your argument.  I don't believe for a minute that there will be no "losers" if the minimum wage was eliminated.  In fact, I am certain that certain jobs would be offered at lower rates if the minimum wage was abolished.  I'm trying to be fair in my analysis.  But to be equally fair, we have to recognize that there are losers in the current system.  There are low-skilled labor currently that cannot get jobs because the minimum wage set the bar too high.  There are also businesses that cannot operate in their home country because the minimum wage is set too high for them to compete internationally. 

You can't look for one case of people "losing" and use that to prove that value of a minimum wage.  Instead, to be fair, we have to consider the net effect of a minimum wage and I strongly believe the net effect is negative.  Meaning, we do more damage to society by raising a minimum wage than we would do by abolishing it.  In fact, I believe we would improve society by abolishing it.

Your post singles out a very specific situation as justification for a minimum wage.  Again, this is an unfair tactic, but a closer look at your example I feel further justifies my argument.  I'll explain...

You criticize Tescos and Sainsbury for "decimating" the competition using "ruthless" pricing strategies.  And you go onto claim:

"Not only was the threat to genuine competition coming from pricing strategies, but also from acquisitions, which in turn leads to downsizing."

You claim these companies threated "genuine competition" but you completely neglect to consider that these companies are introducing "genuine competition" into the  market place.  Tesco and Sainsbury aren't government subsidized corporations beating up on the little guys.  The owners and managers of these companies used the freedom provided to them by a free market system to devise a lower cost structure for providing food products to consumers.  You even state that they achieved their cost reductions through "economies of scale," which is hardly a ruthless means of beating your competition.  There is nothing unfair about people freely organizing and developing ideas and methodologies to increase productivity.    In fact, there is a bit of irony in these types of arguments for the "poor local producer," that being, no one criticizes the local producers for trying to beat each other, but when one of those producers becomes so advanced he beats almost everyone suddenly its unfair. 

"With competition so stifled and a select few corporations able to wield such ridiculous power, then it is only right for a minumum wage to be imposed."

But competition wasn't stifled, it was fiercer than every.  And I'm really unsure of what reason supports your arguement at this point.   The claim that it is "only right" is pure subjective conjecture.

"Therefore, before the minumum wage was introduced these supermarkets were paying whatever they could get away with. As the type of work is unskilled, they were able to get away with paying very very little because supply of such labour far outstripped demand. Left to the market forces, this position would remain completely unchanged."

They weren't paying whatever they could get away with.  They were paying the rate at which they felt their business would maximize productivity.  You said yourself, the work is "unskilled" and even more damaging to your argument you mention that "the suppy of such labor far outstripped demand." In other words, you mean there are a lot of people without jobs.  I agree, poverty is an unfortunate circumstance that we should fight to minimize, but your logic just doesn't work here.  If the problem with the location is that people need jobs, then imposing rules that hurt business is not the wisest decision.  Again, you completely ignore a few things a) these people are free to refuse their rate of pay and look for work elsewhere b) tescos is passing on its savings to the people that live in the community c) some people are quite simply poor workers, if its soooo easy for you to visualize rich assholes why is it so hard for you to visualize poor assholes. there are poor, low-skilled people living in this world, that businesses have a very hard time employing.  Finally, again your last comment that left alone these conditions would never change are pure conjecture.  Some how, market conditions change all the time under a free market system.  You should reevaluate your core assumptions when you say things like that, which are very obviously untrue.

"Indeed, we can all see in which direction this country is heading, the outsourcing of I.T jobs continues unabaited and so the role of groceries becomes ever more prominent."

This is a little looney.  I find it hard to believe that the english economy is becoming dependent on groceries.  If that is the case, then I'd suggest your reliance on minimum wage to save everyone is completely misplaced.  For society to have a reasonable standard of living you need to raise the skills of your population.  Higher skilled people earn more money.  But that's not all.  Businesses need to exist that can employee these high skilled people.  Luckily, a free market system let's high skilled people organize and form businesses that can employ other high AND low skilled workers.  Groceries and the minimum wage are not going to save your community.  Increasing the availability of high skilled jobs, and the human capital within your popultion is what lifts populations out of poverty.  Enforcing minimum wages on companies that are trying their hardest to compete kills jobs and helps a few.  But how much does it help them really, raising the minimum wage doesn't lift anyone out of poverty.  It puts a few extra bucks in their pocket, but they live pretty much the same life as before, only some of them get laid off. 

"So whilst you may be all for the free market, what you are actually advocating would lead to people living in deeper poverty than they are now."

Pure conjecture, and avoid using words like "whilst" they sound elitist.  I don't mean to be so critical, but if you really care about poverty you need to have an open mind.  Instead of being ideolistic and saying "if only we could force businesses to pay people more" you have to be more open minded and realistic.  Right now, I get the impression that your stuck on your beliefs.  I thought thru both sides for a long time before leaning in this direction.  I could refute your final comments as well, but this is getting lengthy. 

There are a few major points that need to be kept in mind

1) The only way to be fair is to allow everyone the freedom to make their own decisions. 
2) The market does a reasonably good job at paying people what they are worth.  Some people get screwed, but then again some people make out better than the deserve.  Some how the market knows that a good accountant is worth 80k a year without being told so by the government.  No one complains that the market at times pays high skilled workers unfairly, but we think it selectively discriminates against low skilled workers.  Low skilled workers are paid low wages not because the market is unfair, but because the market is realistic. 
3) Decreasing personal responsibility has a corrosive effective on society.  Research shows that individuals who start working earlier in life tend to earn more later in life.  We also know that societies with higher minimum wages have workers low-skilled workers with poorer work ethics.  I've seen it a million times, it can be extremely difficult to find low-skilled labor in the US with a good work ethic.  As an employer, you almost have to take as a given that some your employees will not always show up to work, that a large percentage of them will be on some types of drugs, that they will get disgruntled over the most trivial matters at times, and so on.  You take all these things with a grain of salt, but then again, as an employer, you also see a vast difference when hiring immigrants from low-income societies.  For whatever reason, these people show up to work every day, try their hardest to do their job well and improve, their always looking for ways to increase their value and in turn earn more money, their amazing at saving money (unlike US workers that piss it all away on alcohol and other fleeting forms of consumption), and often times they are vocal about their frustration with the laziness of their american co-workers.

dexter:

--- Quote from: Javii on August 23, 2006, 06:13:48 PM ---I'm not comfortable with people with a shaved head, especially if they are white.  Imma ask for them to get kicked out of the plane too. 

--- End quote ---
Skiheads?

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