[Botany Bay]

Originally Posted by MonsieurHood

Our goods traded among ourselves and/or sold to foreign markets who desire what we produce, and the goods of foreign nations that we desire to buy sold to us. How that ever got to be "evil", I'll never know.

Neat little story, but completely beside the point for the following reasons:

A) Because a society has been intended to be this and not that by some people a long time ago, does not make it a good, the best or a perfect society. The same argument you use was used by the british monarchy to legitimize taxation of the peasants in the colonies. If your founding fathers would have obeyed to the logic "What is Must Remain Forever", then you would now sing "Britania Rule the Waves", my friend.

B) Social, social-liberal or even the term socialism does not and in no way exclude trade.

C) To regulate markets is not turning your country into a dictatorship. Markets are never absolutely free. The law "Thou shall not steal" is a market regulation. There is no market without rules and regulations. To say the regulations in action now must stay what they are forever, no matter what... well, read point A again.

D) What earned deregulated ultra-liberal turbo-capitalism the label evil? I dont know. Ask him:

[Bright Eyes]

An attitude of kindness, mercy and care towards America's millions of poor people would not compromise the Constitution or devalue the principles for which many people have died to preserve.

Calling health and financial assistance 'Socialism' (or worse, 'Communism', as is often done to stir fear in the hearts of loyal but frightened Americans) is reactionary and devalues human decency. The foundation of America wasn't built for the purpose of creating unfettered Capitalism and the ascendancy of Plutocrats, but to create a land of freedom and opportunity that could benefit anyone. Working hard is part of that deal.

However, dismissing the poor by saying (as I have often heard over the years), 'Get a job!', is cruel and a great evil of selfishness, and avoids any consideration as to why the poor are poor. Other nations can eliminate the worst aspects of poverty (and have far less violent crime) with much smaller economies than the United States has available.

Mercy is one of the things that defines a human as a decent human.

[horatio]

I am an economist so naturally I am aware of the merits of free societies and free markets.
Concerning the temporary socialisation of banks, take a look at how Sweden coped with its banking crisis in the 90s. It's a far better solution than given banks in trouble money, far better than pouring water in bucket with a hole.

In general, I would very much appreciate if economic discussion were less ideologic and more pragmatic. For example let's not talk about how big the government should be, but what it should focus upon. Let's not talk about how evil the government (right view) or how evil free markets (left view) are, but how one best designs human institutions.

[horatio]

Originally Posted by Botany Bay

I dont think the US should become socialist, but a little more social could help. Every nation redistributes wealth via taxes and social security systems. To redistribute wealth to the bottom of a society increses the numbers of consumers and can indeed strengthen an economy, for an economy is basicly nothing more then the ammount of trade in a certain society. More consumers, more trade.

This is of course awfully simplyfied, but you get the basic idea. Fordism, for example: Pay higher loans, increase social security and more customers can afford more goods.

The wider the gap between the rich and the poor, the less consume. A billionaire does only need so and so many pairs of shoes.

If you refer to Ford who paid his workers higher wages, your argument is wrong. His workers could consume more, but only small parts of that went into buying one of his cars. His rationale was to increase the effort and the productivity of his workers by more than the wage increase, such that he made more profit.
That stuff is called efficiency wages in economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency_wages). An employer cannot perfectly monitor his employees, so he pays them a higher wage which creates unemployment which acts as incentive for the employee to work harder, because if he gets laid off he is unemployed for some time.

That is what modern economics is about and it is interesting as you get different reasons for unemployment than the usual tax (higher taxes, less incentive to work or save) or union (unions don't care for unemployed but only for their members, so they bargain for above equilibirum wages) explanations.

[Botany Bay]

My argument wasnt about Fordism. I used Fordism as an example to demonstrate how social security systems and the redistribution of wealth can indeed boost an economy and thus profit all. I used Fordism to show, that total greed and an "All for Themselves" attitude is neither ethical nor allways practical or efficient and definetly not wise.

In other terms: Ferenginar is doomed to get bankrupt very soon. Greed is inefficient.

[Zardoz]

Originally Posted by Botany Bay

My argument wasnt about Fordism. I used Fordism as an example to demonstrate how social security systems and the redistribution of wealth can indeed boost an economy and thus profit all. I used Fordism to show, that total greed and an "All for Themselves" attitude is neither ethical nor allways practical or efficient and definetly not wise.

In other terms: Ferenginar is doomed to get bankrupt very soon. Greed is inefficient.

But all political systems thus far have gotten to that point.

[horatio]

Originally Posted by Botany Bay

My argument wasnt about Fordism. I used Fordism as an example to demonstrate how social security systems and the redistribution of wealth can indeed boost an economy and thus profit all. I used Fordism to show, that total greed and an "All for Themselves" attitude is neither ethical nor allways practical or efficient and definetly not wise.

In other terms: Ferenginar is doomed to get bankrupt very soon. Greed is inefficient.

I fail to see why it should be so. There are arguments for why a more equal wealth distribution might increase the efficiency of an economy, but the ones I am aware of usually work better under the cirumstances of development countries (I could explain it, but it would be as wonkish as my previous post).
And please don't confuse it with a more equal income dsitribution, to achieve that you always reduce incentives if you increase taxes, so there the trade-off between efficiency and fairness exits, or to use a metaphor, if you want everyone to get a similar sized piece of the cake, the cake will become smaller.

[horatio]

Originally Posted by Botany Bay

My argument wasnt about Fordism. I used Fordism as an example to demonstrate how social security systems and the redistribution of wealth can indeed boost an economy and thus profit all. I used Fordism to show, that total greed and an "All for Themselves" attitude is neither ethical nor allways practical or efficient and definetly not wise.

In other terms: Ferenginar is doomed to get bankrupt very soon. Greed is inefficient.

I fail to see why it should be so. Most people would not work if they would not have to. I definitely would not.

There are arguments for why a more equal wealth distribution might increase the efficiency of an economy, but the ones I am aware of usually work better under the cirumstances of development countries (I could explain it, but it would be as wonkish as my previous post).
And please don't confuse it with a more equal income dsitribution, to achieve that you always reduce incentives if you increase taxes, so there the trade-off between efficiency and fairness exits, or to use a metaphor, if you want everyone to get a similar sized piece of the cake, the cake will become smaller.

[Botany Bay]

Originally Posted by horatio

I fail to see why it should be so. Most people would not work if they would not have to. I definitely would not.

Are you sure? I dont believe you. I cant disprove your words, I cant reason against it, but I also cant believe these words to be true. People, who do not work look like this:



Money is an incentive much overrated!

[horatio]

It is not money per se, money is just a means to buy something, to consume. And more consumption is better, or do you seriously believe that we are worse off today than people 100 or 200 years ago, without electricity, water systems, etc.?

I am aware of sociological arguments that people need a profession, a job, a duty to fulfill themselves, to be embedded into another scoial network besides family and friends to feel useful.
But if you ever worked three shifts in an ordinary factory, work is not fun.

In short, work can be satisfying and make you feel useful, but in can also be tedious and exhausting.
The economic approach is to simply ignore that ambiguous aspect and to point out that one hour of more work is one hour less leisure. It is simply a mechanism to transform leisure into consumption (via wage income). And if you are wealthy and can live from your capital income, you enjoy 24h of leisure. You can still do something useful, just check out what Bill Gates or Warrren Buffet do with their billions.

Or, another drastic example, if you examine why people were unhappy during the Great Depression is was rather because of the risk of starving to death than because of the extra time the men could spent with their families (by the way, Monopoly was extremely popular during that time, perhaps because first people substituted from a not so cheap Saturday evening aroudn the block to the cheaper board game, and second at least in Monopoly they could become rich and succesful).