Bernie Sanders and Alan Greenspan "Chat"

[fhl]

Perhaps you should consider how plantation owners in the Old South assigned "value" to labor. Business models, and all that.

Slavery isn't a "free market", dodohead.

 

[piezoe]

I did give them a look, not in depth, but a look. I see a lot of the evidence stating that an increase won't have much if any impact on actual job numbers in a negative way. As I posted previously, I'm giving you that. Right or wrong, I'm not debating that.
What I think is the flaw in the studies is they're looking at wage hikes that happened over an extended period of time. Perhaps any impact on price would be minimal in that case, but it also keeps people below and ever rising poverty line, however slowly it goes up. Should we just bump the wages from 10 to 15 all at once I think the impact on price would be swift and dramatic to the upside.
It's kind of a Catch 22 situation. Raise it slowly and it really doesn't help the low end worker. Big jump will shock the entire system too quickly to absorb the cost. The fix is to create jobs that pay well to replace all the well paying jobs that are being abolished through innovation and off shoring. That doesn't even address corporate greed in laying people off just to fill their own pockets, which does happen. I don't hear a single candidate delivering a realistic solution to the problem. They all have the same rap. We much create jobs and bring jobs back. Yeah, sure. What jobs, in what sector, and just how the hell do they propose to do it? An actual plan, not just empty rhetoric.

You have a good point that a sudden large jump in the minimum wage would be disruptive. I believe everyone understands that. Rises in minimum by more than small amounts are phased in. In the present case, the minimum is so far below where it needs to be for a sound economy that a rise to say 12-15/hr would have to be phased in over many months, but of course at a rate significantly greater than the inflation rate, or nothing would be gained.

 

[fhl]

Perhaps you should consider how plantation owners in the Old South assigned "value" to labor. Business models, and all that.

Actually, the slave model is much closer to the model that you and bernie push.
It's just that the employees are no longer the slaves. Under your system, the business owners would be the slaves.

 

[jem]

you can't really believe that kabuki bullshit. he was lowering rates during a bubble so his bosses could make bigger bonuses and profits and so the FED cronies could place 1.5 trillion worth of crap seconds with China... and then well they blew up...convert them to tax payer backed treasuries.

It was all so disgustingly greedly... almost blew up the world system and not for the moment was it due to naivete or Ayn Rand.

You are one of the erudite guys here that realizes that Greenspan actually was very attracted to Ayn Rand "objectivism." It was obviously more than just a casual interest in his case. That , I believe, is one of the factors that helped underpin his belief in classical, economic equilibrium theory that turned out to be so faulty. Greenspan was the chief regulator, but ironically, being so firmly committed to Rand's philosophy, he did not believe in regulation. He thought, quite mistakenly as it turned out, that markets left alone will eventually return, harmlessly back to equilibrium. This is in dramatic contrast to Soros's views that markets have a natural tendency to move away from equilibrium and that they won't necessarily, harmlessly, and spontaneously return to equilibrium .

 

[ETcallhome]

So saith the armchair economist that has more knowledge than all the participants in the market collectively put together.

it's just common knowledge. If you are in business it is your job to keep all costs, including labor, and taxes and regulations and who knows what all as low as possible.

 

[ETcallhome]

You have a good point that a sudden large jump in the minimum wage would be disruptive. I believe everyone understands that. Rises in minimum by more than small amounts are phased in. In the present case, the minimum is so far below where it needs to be for a sound economy that a rise to say 12-15/hr would have to be phased in over many months, but of course at a rate significantly greater than the inflation rate, or nothing would be gained.

I agree, it's about the last tool we have to use. And you know what the British say about the Americans, "After exhausting all other options they usually do the right thing."

 

[Ricter]

it's just common knowledge. If you are in business it is your job to keep all costs, including labor, and taxes and regulations and who knows what all as low as possible.

As low as practical.

 

[piezoe]

you can't divorce wages from business. I think we all want USA to have the highest wages in the world. One component of a high wage is gainful employment by a profitable business. The best way to keep a business profitable is to keep wages as low as possible. The best way to get laid off is to make wages too high.

Well, that would be exactly my point! When you depend on your employees being subsidized by the taxpayer to maximize profits, you have "divorced" wages from what should be a sound capitalist business model and become a business partner with the government. We have done that to a damaging extent. We must correct that situation. I am a capitalist through and through, and I understand that for capitalism to maintain itself in the long run, against the forces that would want to destroy it, we capitalists must act responsibly against our baser instincts. We must avoid relying on taxpayer subsidized wages for greater profits, if we want to avoid the defects in capitalism that can lead us toward fascism. I have no interest in pursuing policies that can end at the Guillotine, to speak figuratively, I hope. From both the capitalist and the taxpayer's viewpoint, wages that are too low are a bad idea.

 

[Frederick Foresight]

Slavery isn't a "free market", dodohead.

There is no "free" market, exactly. Markets need rules and regulations in place for commerce to exist. The question is, who writes the rules and whom do they favor? Think "lobby."

 

[fhl]

Greenspan blew bubbles by keeping rates to low and then bernanke did the same and now yellen. None of them are doing anything different at all. Except more.

They're all subjecting this country to economic chaos. They are all guilty.

Yet we have people on here that say greenspan's policies were bad and bernanke and yellen's are good. How can this be? The fed is doing the same thing it's done for decades.

I'll tell you how. Because the left is filled with krugmans. Easy money under bush was horrible because it helped to prop up Bush. Easy money under obama is awesome because it props him up. And if hillary is elected, they'll be all for more easy monetary policy and if trump is elected, they'll do nothing but whine about the idiocy of printing money.