natty_dread wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:I read the first 3 paragraphs and realized where it's going.
I didn't really pay attention to the polemic part of the article, I was mainly looking at the actual points, after the first paragraphs.
Did you read the rest of the article?
These are what seemed the most reasonable to me:
Again, I'm not saying I entirely agree with the article. But I also don't think you can dismiss out of hand because you don't like the writing style of the author.
BigBallinStalin wrote:If you aggregate the wealth of the 99%, it's more than the 1%'s. Isn't that funny?
Sure is... but when you take the top 20%, apparently they own over 90% of the wealth:
Of course, I agree, but I'm just highlighting how the author engages in rhetoric. What he's writing is total bullshit. Either he doesn't understand his topic, or he's very good at demagoguery.
I'll give his points a quick once-over (and I didn't spend any time editing this, so bear with me please):
2. Rich people are “job creators.”
This is the old “trickle-down” idea -- that if you give enough money to the already-rich eventually some of that money will trickle down to the rest of us. This is also called the “getting peed on” theory of economics.
The basis of this thinking comes from the theories of Ayn Rand, who argued that society consists of “producers” and “parasites.” Rand’s fundamentally anti-democratic ideology says that democracy is a form of “collectivism” in which people who don’t want to work and produce use their numbers to steal from a gifted few who are the “producers” of goods and services. Rand’s followers claim that wealthy people are rich because they “produce.” The rest of us are “parasites” who “take money” from the productive rich, by taxing them. This revenue is “redistributed” to the parasites to pay for our “entitlements.”
They say that if wealthy people have more money they will use that money to start businesses and hire people. But anyone with a real business will tell you that people coming in the door and buying things is what creates jobs. In a real economy, people wanting to buy things – demand – is what causes businesses to form and people to be hired.
Conflating "trickle-down" theory, which was political rhetoric during Reagan's time, with Ayn Rand's Objectivism/Randism really doesn't describe how "the rich" are "job creators." "Getting peed on" theory of economics is pretty funny, but that doesn't describe it either. The point of that is to elicit the emotional response of either (1) laughter, so that you're less likely to contend his points because you like the writer a little bit more, and/or (2) anger, which prevents clear thinking and since its aligned with the author's angry writing style, you'll tend to agree with him for no logical reasons.
Notice how he uses Ayn Rand's "producer"/"parasite" description. If you want to discuss economics honestly, people won't talk like this--unless they're specifically talking about Ayn Rand, but we're not. He's suppose to be discussing how the "trickle down" theory works through his understanding of actual economics, but he fails. (I'm assuming that he's not doing all of Ayn Rand's work any justice either, but that's beside the point). The point is that the analogy from a fiction writer doesn't sync well with actual economics.
So basically, he says, "Demand is what matters, demand for products creates jobs, people wanting to buy stuff causes businesses to form and people to be hired." But he forgets: who supplies the jobs? Producers of jobs. Where does the money come from? Partly from the top 20% and partly from fresh entrepreneurs on a bank loan. Who perceives demand? Entrepreneurs. And who funds entrepreneurial activity? Banks typically (or cash surpluses within businesses, which is provided from investments from rich and non-rich people from bonds and stocks), and where's that money come from? Typically the wealthy. How is that money generated? Mostly from "rich people" investments/savings.
It's a reciprocal process; it isn't this one-sided process. Demand isn't just readily perceived like his black-box example. It takes skill and knowledge to perceive the demand for a particular knowledge, and very few people are very good at doing this. They get paid well to find target markets, and those who actually sell the products get paid even more. Eliminate the wealthy or tax them 90% and watch that wealth disappear. Watch the economic system collapse no matter how hard people want to buy stuff.
History – and a quick look around us today – shows that when all the money goes to a few at the top demand from the rest of us dries up and everything breaks down. Taxing the people at the top and reinvesting the money into the democratic society is fundamental to keeping things going.
"How am I right? HISTORY! AND TODAY!" Really? History? Did he mention any specific events in history? ....
How about today? That's what happened? The money "goes to a few at the top demand from the rest of us dries up and everything breaks down." That's it? Money just aggregated at the top, and demand inexplicably "dried up." Why didn't the Bust happen earlier? Why isn't it worse now given that the bailouts went to "the few at the top"? Don't you see how his explanation fails to explain anything? It's just full of fail.
People aren't these little buy-buy-buy machines. They're motivated for reasons. Right now, most people (consumers and producers) aren't "stimulating demand" because of the high uncertainty. We're not sure what the government has in store for us due to its inconsistent behavior, and we're not sure if things will get worse. And there's more to say, but the answer is complicated--much more so than a "demand dried up because money was at the top" explanation.
5. “Protectionism” hurts the economy.
Corporate conservatives argue that “free trade” is always good under all circumstances. They say we get lower prices and our businesses are able to reach more customers. Of course trade can be a wonderful thing, increasing the standard of living on both sides of the trade border.
Yeah, that's been the case. It's not a lie. Go check out Hans Rosling's
work.
Seriously, "... is
always good under
all circumstances." Could he straw man fallacy any harder? "Corporate conservatives." That's a cute flag word too. Let's just conflate the two together, and keep this rhetoric train rolling.
But the trade deals of recent decades have not been free or fair, and can’t really even be called “trade.” What has happened is countries sell to us but do not buy equally from us, causing huge trade deficits that have drained our economy and our jobs and our wages. Instead of increasing prosperity they have been used to increase exploitation of working people and the environment for the benefit of a wealthy few.
"Fair" is a normative claim; therefore, we've dipped into the realm of morality and its quagmire of subjectivism. Notwithstanding that, there's still trade. "Free trade" still doesn't exist because the US still has protectionist policies at play, so we could even argue that the US isn't being fair. Either way, it's still trade because goods are being exchanged. If no goods are being exchanged, there's no trade. I'm arguing against a really idiotic claim he's making. His statement should indicate to you that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Trade deficits themselves don't drain an economy, jobs, or wages; otherwise, our economic growth would have been decreasing, unemployment would have been steadily increasing, and our wages* should be dropping since the 1980s when the deficit gap began to steadily increase. *Wages for men have been slowly dropping since the 1960s, but not for women. Still, his claim hardly explains the drop in male median wages.
"Exploitation." There's your flag word for you, so bust out the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital because it's time for a Marxist Party. Again, the decrease in protectionist policies across many international borders provided better opportunities to billions of people around the world. It's amazing that he overlooks the statistics shown by Hans Rosling (which neatly summarizes a colossal amount of research over the decades). This author flat out ignores the rising wages of millions of people around the world, and with it, increases in life expectancies, decrease in mortality rates, etc. Check out the Economic Freedom Index for a general idea of the strong correlation between more economic freedom and a higher standard of living (i.e. prosperity).
Our prosperity is the fruit of our democracy.
That's just a meaningless statement. What kind of democracy? There's plenty of them, but let's be vague so the reader can assume whatever syncs the best with the reader's mind.
Conservatives say that it is good that businesses in countries like China are more competitive because they don’t have a lot of regulations to comply with. Countries where the people have little say in things don’t have to spend the money to pay minimum wages, keep the environment clean, keep workers safe and keep products up to standard and they don’t have to worry about lawsuits. They are more “efficient.” So they can charge less.
Oh, so that's the definition of efficiency? I never knew it included "no regulation = more efficiency." Derp, it depends on the context. For example, it's not efficient for a business in the US to have machines that rip off the limbs of its workers every single day. It's morally reprehensible and especially cost-prohibitive.
I really just want to rage about how this guy has no idea how the people in China and the government behave with each other. The government can't magically whisk away a dirty environment given its current resources and constraints. It's like saying that the US in 1890 should have been as clean as the US in 2010... There are huge constraints here, and the low representation of the people in the government doesn't say enough.
Look at India! They have a democracy, and economic conditions are
worse there than in China. Ninja, please.
Conservatives who argue that we should have less regulation, lower wages, fewer benefits, fewer consumer, worker and environmental protections are really arguing that we should abandon democracy. By opening our borders to goods made where people do not have a say we made democracy a competitive disadvantage.
They're more likely to argue who should really be in the business of determining those. Then again, how does this guy define "conservatives"? He just keeps that blank because this is rhetoric. You're suppose to fill in the gaps here and overlook his own gaps. If the "abandoning democracy" hypothesis was true, then any country which doesn't have the same level of regulation, wages, benefits, and protections of today is not a democracy because a decrease in those variables leads to an abandonment of democracy. I guess the US wasn't a democracy 30 years ago, or a 100 years ago.
That last sentence just hurts my head. The vague notion of "democracy" can't even hold a competitive advantage or disadvantage because "democracy" doesn't produce anything itself. It's just a description of various political forms of proportional representation for peoples within some political boundary.
All this rhetoric makes me want to play too: Liberal calls for further government intervention lead to government-mandated wages and regulations which ignore the real, economic constraints. This ignorance causes havoc on the economy, and consumer and worker protection would be guaranteed merely at the police state's discretion. These liberals are unwittingly stripping away our basic freedoms while they goose-step closer and closer toward fascism.
