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> More competition has not lead to better conditions for workers. We are currently at such a low level of employment that economists don't know what the natural

> More competition has not lead to better conditions for workers. We are currently at such a low level of employment that economists don't know what the natural level of employment is anymore and this is still happening to employees. 95% extreme poverty to 5%, much higher life expectancy, exponential wealth growth and low unemployement. Your first sentence plainly contradicts reality 100%. > You're argument that "they would have had it worse" assumes that that Amazon wouldn't have employees these people if they were only making billionaires instead of people worth 100s of billions. How is western society making more money and goods than ever but the average worker is doing worse while the richest are getting richer than ever? Because thats not whats happening. Wages stagnated while half of the population entered the workforce worldwide-> if women went back to the employement levelts of the 70's you would find wages would grow quite a bit! An that is only one of the causes: another is that such propaganda always talks about the US, but doesnt see that wages of poorest countries in south east asia, or china, have grown enormously since the 70s by basically providing cheap clothes and goods to the US. > Unfettered capitalism doesn't lead to all boats rising That has been the reality since its inception. This is what the people that repeat that "trickle down doesnt work" end up believing. The unnuanced opinion that if someone has money, he has wealth (which is wrong) and if someone has wealth he has stolen (wrong again) and if wealth were distributed it would be better for all (wrong again). > To state that, in an era of less regulation than in America's golden age where we see the average citizen's life stagnating or even getting worse, we need even less regulation so that the people who are worth more than entire countries can compete better is at best putting your head in the sand and at worst being actively against your fellow man The us is not in an era of low regulation. The Us is super regulated both federally and state level. You need to train 1500 hours in an apprenticeship to be a hair stylist in california. You cant import drugs from abroad without extreme FDA regulatory costs. Doctors from outside the US need to do a residency again to be able to get a medical license in the US. Cities indulge in nymbism to be rentist about land. Taxes have regressive implementations the state economists recognize but they cant subsistitute with simpler and fairer taxes due to legal, political and tax regulations. The us has immigration quotas, for christ sake. The US government spends 37% of gdp. 37%! The government consumes all the wealth of billionaires together every year. You would wipe out all the billionaires in the world in one year of tax breaks for everyone in the us. The next year there are no more billionaires and you still have to pay the same taxes.

lovich 9y ago
We might be talking about different points of time. I am looking at post ww2 US to today. I would agree with you that so far over the long term conditions have been greatly improved and still are being greatly improved in areas which don't have much to begin with like china 20-30 years ago. As it stands for the past few decades though the situation has been getting worse in the US. To your point about "trickle down doesn't work". Where is your evidence that it does work? The trickle down theories have been going on for at least a hundred years when it was horse and sparrow and we haven't seen improvements to the average person from it. The largest improvements have come from labor rights having to physically fight companies for it ~100 years ago, and the post war boom when tax rates on the top income levels were at their historical highs. Since trickle down economics started getting pushed into the economy and tax rates have been continually lowered for the richest, we've seen conditions for everyone not in tech or finance stagnate or go down. Additionally the US government expenditures are not a black hope that wealth and goods are tossed into. They stimulate the economy as well, although I will agree that much of it is comically inefficient For your point about regulations I'm not sure how explain my feelings on it eloquently, but yes those massive regulations exist and end up squeezing out the smaller players. What they have become though is just another tool for large corporations to keep competition out while not changing their behavior much. We end up having regulations to keep the environment clean that make it impossible for small manufactories to run profitably but still don't keep pollution gone. Those regulations are bad and I can't point to the government as a good solution on how to get good regulations, but I do believe that they get it right sometimes where if it's left up to corporations there will always be a race to the bottom and we will get no protections
- conanbatt 9y ago
  > To your point about "trickle down doesn't work". Where is your evidence that it does work? The trickle down theories have been going on for at least a hundred years when it was horse and sparrow and we haven't seen improvements to the average person from it. The largest improvements have come from labor rights having to physically fight companies for it ~100 years ago, and the post war boom when tax rates on the top income levels were at their historical highs. Since trickle down economics started getting pushed into the economy and tax rates have been continually lowered for the richest, we've seen conditions for everyone not in tech or finance stagnate or go down. Lets remember trickle down is an originally demeaning term that has like a 100 years old, and was i think promoted by a comedian. It contains in itself an inconsistency with the general stance of lowering taxes, because the purported argument that its supposed to mock is that its better to tax poor people over rich people because rich know better to do with the money. But in general, the main reason to lower taxes is because anyone is better to do with money than the state. Its just that the state is just nominally more effective by taking money from those on top. I say nominally because in the end the state does know how to really tax poor people, which have less resources to fight it. Progressive taxation in itself brings lots of problems and in its glory of simplification it commits many injustices as well. But above all, the idea of a tax to punish wealthy is envious and petty: they have more so they should pay more. Its not economics, its not morality, its a tantrum. It has been said in the past (i dont know if the math is current) that if you eliminated all exemptions of taxes and put a flat 15% tax on income, you would actually increase tax revenue. And you would do so without requirement nearly as much accounting work as it is today. One of the reasons that is politically hard to sell is because its not progressive enough. So I do see progressive taxation as an obstacle to simpler and more effective tax systems. Inequality is a real problem, when libertarians say it doesnt matter I think they are wrong. But when liberals say that the way to manage that is a bigger state and bigger taxes they are "wronger". How to solve inequality is still an open problem: its growing even in europe where the tax rate is much higher and the state is much higher. So increasing taxes or state benefits are not the way to reduce inequality. Now regarding labor laws: I dissent entirely with the premise. Labor laws were and are economically useful as long as they keep the state out of trampling their rights, but they are not useful to improve their working conditions. What lifts the workers labor conditions are not laws but competition for their labor. Lets take argentina as an example: it has strict labor laws and a "in dubis pro operario" legal system where any lawsuit against the employer rules in favor of the employee. Unions have constitutional protections, like their leaders cant be arrested. The result is that the strongest unions have high wages. Success? Hell no. Argentina has had growing poverty and stagnant GDP/capita growth since unions were given this power. The unions protect their workers at everybody elses expense. Because the only way to increase a workers wage is to increase his productivity (which unions dont do) or to reduce the number of workers. They plainly reduce supply, which means they push people to not have jobs. You will find Argentina, Spain and France, countries with strong unions, to have higher unemployment.

lovich 9y ago

We might be talking about different points of time. I am looking at post ww2 US to today. I would agree with you that so far over the long term conditions have been greatly improved and still are being greatly improved in areas which don't have much to begin with like china 20-30 years ago. As it stands for the past few decades though the situation has been getting worse in the US. To your point about "trickle down doesn't work". Where is your evidence that it does work? The trickle down theories have been going on for at least a hundred years when it was horse and sparrow and we haven't seen improvements to the average person from it. The largest improvements have come from labor rights having to physically fight companies for it ~100 years ago, and the post war boom when tax rates on the top income levels were at their historical highs. Since trickle down economics started getting pushed into the economy and tax rates have been continually lowered for the richest, we've seen conditions for everyone not in tech or finance stagnate or go down. Additionally the US government expenditures are not a black hope that wealth and goods are tossed into. They stimulate the economy as well, although I will agree that much of it is comically inefficient For your point about regulations I'm not sure how explain my feelings on it eloquently, but yes those massive regulations exist and end up squeezing out the smaller players. What they have become though is just another tool for large corporations to keep competition out while not changing their behavior much. We end up having regulations to keep the environment clean that make it impossible for small manufactories to run profitably but still don't keep pollution gone. Those regulations are bad and I can't point to the government as a good solution on how to get good regulations, but I do believe that they get it right sometimes where if it's left up to corporations there will always be a race to the bottom and we will get no protections

conanbatt 9y ago
> To your point about "trickle down doesn't work". Where is your evidence that it does work? The trickle down theories have been going on for at least a hundred years when it was horse and sparrow and we haven't seen improvements to the average person from it. The largest improvements have come from labor rights having to physically fight companies for it ~100 years ago, and the post war boom when tax rates on the top income levels were at their historical highs. Since trickle down economics started getting pushed into the economy and tax rates have been continually lowered for the richest, we've seen conditions for everyone not in tech or finance stagnate or go down. Lets remember trickle down is an originally demeaning term that has like a 100 years old, and was i think promoted by a comedian. It contains in itself an inconsistency with the general stance of lowering taxes, because the purported argument that its supposed to mock is that its better to tax poor people over rich people because rich know better to do with the money. But in general, the main reason to lower taxes is because anyone is better to do with money than the state. Its just that the state is just nominally more effective by taking money from those on top. I say nominally because in the end the state does know how to really tax poor people, which have less resources to fight it. Progressive taxation in itself brings lots of problems and in its glory of simplification it commits many injustices as well. But above all, the idea of a tax to punish wealthy is envious and petty: they have more so they should pay more. Its not economics, its not morality, its a tantrum. It has been said in the past (i dont know if the math is current) that if you eliminated all exemptions of taxes and put a flat 15% tax on income, you would actually increase tax revenue. And you would do so without requirement nearly as much accounting work as it is today. One of the reasons that is politically hard to sell is because its not progressive enough. So I do see progressive taxation as an obstacle to simpler and more effective tax systems. Inequality is a real problem, when libertarians say it doesnt matter I think they are wrong. But when liberals say that the way to manage that is a bigger state and bigger taxes they are "wronger". How to solve inequality is still an open problem: its growing even in europe where the tax rate is much higher and the state is much higher. So increasing taxes or state benefits are not the way to reduce inequality. Now regarding labor laws: I dissent entirely with the premise. Labor laws were and are economically useful as long as they keep the state out of trampling their rights, but they are not useful to improve their working conditions. What lifts the workers labor conditions are not laws but competition for their labor. Lets take argentina as an example: it has strict labor laws and a "in dubis pro operario" legal system where any lawsuit against the employer rules in favor of the employee. Unions have constitutional protections, like their leaders cant be arrested. The result is that the strongest unions have high wages. Success? Hell no. Argentina has had growing poverty and stagnant GDP/capita growth since unions were given this power. The unions protect their workers at everybody elses expense. Because the only way to increase a workers wage is to increase his productivity (which unions dont do) or to reduce the number of workers. They plainly reduce supply, which means they push people to not have jobs. You will find Argentina, Spain and France, countries with strong unions, to have higher unemployment.