If manufacturing wages have been steadily increasing throughout the past decade, where geographically are those increases located and how can my sorry father, who can no longer take overtime (because it is no longer provided) at the factory as a salaried machine technician, cash in on that prosperity?
I don’t mean to be anecdotal. We’re an Ohioan family.
Also, not only in these parts are less hours available throughout the aforementioned factory to the floor workers, but wages have not been rising and the yearly bonuses have been culled back significantly in the decade my father has been employed there. Corporate profits, however, have continued to rise and all salesmen remain with both heafty bonuses and commission; housed in the same building. It seems like the national figures on compensation don’t take into account that compensation is shifting demographics based on any number of things. “x” proportion of floor workers see “y” compensation while “a” proportion of salesmen see “b” compensation, all equal to “c” over “d” while is the national real compensation per hour.
Furthermore, maybe I’m mistaken, but isn’t the inflation-adjusted rise in energy (electric, gas, etc.) expenditures and energy costs extremely detrimental to your claim that there’s a significant problem with arguing real wages as falling? This person talks about the demand for ethanol driving up corn prices:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-rising-food-prices-are-eating-more-of-your-paycheck
Do eggs really speak for the food industry? I hardly ever buy eggs, but I use many pre-processed foods with eggs in them already.
Chart 41 says that food, clothing and housing expenditures have declined. But if people’s median income per household is rising, how is that necessarily indicitive that workers as an average are seeing the prosperity that is obviously occuring. Also, how is that indicitive that they’re spending it on necessities like food, clothing and housing? What’s the most expensive thing in America that the largest % of the population spends on average the largest % of their wealth on?
You need to provide evidence for your manufacturing statistics. I don’t know if manufacturing wages are increasing. I don’t know if the industry is even growing. I don’t even know if it is a free market.
I will tell you that if you want money, or other goods and services, from your fellow man, you should try to find some way to convince him to give it to you. If you attack him, he’ll fight back. If you win, capital will fly from the country.
No system built on coercion can stand the test of time, ala Romans.
Someone should do one of those money charts and show where tax dollars go.
That would hurt the government’s campaign of anti-interpretivism on the minds of tax payers.
While I don’t doubt the stats that krazy kaju posted, I believe a lot of the so-called improvements in standards of living has mostly to do with the ease of taking on large amounts of debt. That is mainly due to the nature of the fiat system.
If everyone borrows the new fiat money, how do they obtain an advantage in relative purchasing power?
Assuming all the other major economies are performing similar stunts with their money supplies, treasury securities and bonds, my opinion is there is absolutely no advantage whatsoever other than prolonging an otherwise sudden death of capital’s value and trade volume.
I’m starting to think the G20 didn’t stimulate to recover, but stimulated to acquire time in which to negotiate how to turn entire countries into gated communities.
OP: Commies and other wacko leftists often like to claim that real wages are falling in the United States, and that this fall is due to “free markets.” Theoretically, of course, this claim is bunk
OP (10 posts later) : Real wages have fallen
Yeah, you really squashed that one, eh?
I think it’s pretty silly to compare xx years ago and today, especially with computers. What is that going to tell you about capitalism vs socialism? Gee, I guess the Soviet factories didn’t have robots eh? Nor GM foods? Nor modern fertilisers and pesticides huh?
It’s a silly comparison. And as you admit, real wages have fallen.Rather than just glibly accept you are contradicting your own claims made in the OP, why not face the challenge thrown here to lefties and explain the apparent failure of capitalism to bring about the benefits you originally claimed it had made? (and which you suggested lefties had to explain)
Such arguments also ignore the bigger picture of econo-political relationships, such as american power in regulating and acquiring oil supplies, negotiating trade ‘agreements’ for raw materials etc. A relative gain could easily be achieved in USA by forcing down prices of its suppliers - but what is the overall effect ie including the wages of 3rd world raw material suppliers etc?
A friend of mine works for the major UK food retailer - he knows from experience they hammer farmers to obtain extremely low prices, often reducing sellers to tears/bankcruptcy. Where do those tears feature in your charts?
wouldn’t let me edit last post…I wanted to add:
And this thing about socialism as ‘coercion’? Could you explain how I am free from coercion under a capitalist private property system? Do I have a choice not to live under capitalism and markets and private property?
Please realize, TLNL, that posters here are universally against the current system. If we speak of capitalism positively, we do not mean the “capitalism” that exists today. The market today is very heavily regulated and distorted by the state; and yes, the state is greatly influenced by the rich. We are against American political power regulating and acquiring oil supplies just as much as you are.
And I believe the OP meant that it is bunk to blame the fall in real wages on free markets. The fall in real wages in the US has coincided with rising intervention by the state. Economic theory suggests that this is not merely correlation, but that government policies are causing capital consumption and a fall in real wealth.
graph show real view of that what we think.i am new to this post.house hold income expenditure we can catch everything through calculation.I appreciate the concern which is been rose. i want to share my views and discuss to it.
===============
Free Wedding Hawaii
hehe - that sounds so like the old socialists - shall we call it “really-existing capitalism” then?
If it’s the case that really-existing capitalism is so different from your theoretical model, how can it be used as evidence for the superiority of pure capitalism as attempted by the OP? This seems a major problem to me, an inescapable one perhaps.
I think we’re much further from socialism than we are from capitalism. But anyway, shouldn’t Miseians accept the lack of a pure capitalism as indicative of how idealistic and prone to corruption their position is, just as socialists are supposed to accept (and adjust to) the supposedly unavoidable corruption of socialism (a la USSR, say)?
Likewise that it isn’t very popular? I’m a socialist, which means a democrat - I accept the world isn’t especially socialist, so I have to lump it. Do people here accept the same about their ‘pure’ capitalism? That it’s unpopular (else it would be)?
Also that whilst the market may very well be regulated, and somewhat imperfect, all in all it provides the best we can get - or at least, the best we can reasonably agree upon? I mean, one can’t ignore one’s opponents. I tend to loathe capitalism but I respect the fact the world is not agitating for socialism. Pure capitalists should recognise the fact too from their own perspective too?
Does the current system look anything like the “capitalism” promoted by Mises and others, other than the fact that both are called capitalism? “We” were not saying in the 80s, “The framework for our capitalist utopia has been laid - everything that happens in the next 30 years will be due to our ideal capitalist system!” Mises spoke out repeatedly against the interventionist system that existed in his lifetime and that has only intensified today.
In the post where he admitted that real wages have fallen, krazy kaju said, “The reason for this is that the monetary system itself is just one factor in the whole economy. Our markets here in America are stronger than the inflationary forces the Fed creates.” I don’t think that’s a horrible way to phrase it. The market is hampered, but not abolished. Private property is not entirely secure, contract is not without stipulations, money is not very stable, etc., but they still exist to some degree and still encourage the accumulation of capital.
It is not a binary relationship. I don’t think it’s even coherent to say there is a range in which socialism is on one end and capitalism on the other.
The problems are not inherent in the free market, but in the institution known as the state. The problems of socialism are inherent in the socialist program, which neglects the importance of incentives and suffers from the inability to coordinate production. For the Misesian, the obstacle is physical and easy to spot: the state. For the socialist, you have a whole bunch of intractable problems.
And obviously the free market is not incredibly popular right now, but so what? Economics is a science, and Mises and others have made the case that ‘capitalism’ is the best system to satisfy our material condition. Heliocentrism wasn’t popular etc. etc.
That’s basically a tautology.
Yes, if you don’t know you’re a capitalist, you are probably a socialist. It seems to be the default position for humans.
I read a study on primates recently that higher-order of the animal kingdom often are given an experiment that might provide inference on human social order’s, well, socialisticness. The study found that when 2 fruits were given to this particular primate, it would more commonly share the fruit with a relative or another primate it was familiar with. The study seemed to indicate that charitable acts have a positive social benefit, obviously to a laymen.
But not charitable acts to strangers, another obvious deduction. Hence socialism’s plight on a sociological level.
Humans are well wired to understand ‘in this together’ and direct cooperation. Indirect cooperation, especially ones involving basically amoral self equilibrating mechanisms which are not dependent on intentions, are both confusing and offensive to normal morality. This is why markets alienate them, and also why customary law just doesn’t click in their heads. The latter is true of many libertarians, too, who get into silly ‘angels on pinhead’ arguments over natural law, etc.
No system built on coercion can stand the test of time, ala Romans.
Non-propertarian systems tend to bulk into empires which tend to eat their own capital base. However, if they keep their expropriations low somehow they can last indefinitely. Even when they do collapse they are just as often replaced by something equally bad or worse as anything better. Certainly anarchy rarely comes out of anarchy. Most anarchist societies were pre-political (tribal Germanies, Cossacks) and only rare accidents seem to have propelled significantly political societies into significantly propertarian-contract societies (Somalia, Feudal Europe).
Re: Vichy Army,
Humans are well wired to understand 'in this together' and direct cooperation. Indirect cooperation, especially ones involving basically amoral self equilibrating mechanisms which are not dependent on intentions, are both confusing and offensive to normal morality. This is why markets alienate them [humans],
What makes you think markets are amoral? You’re right in that they’re not dependent on INTENTIONS, since they depend on purposeful action, but that does not make voluntary, mutually beneficial interactions “amoral.”