Re: [OT] USA Elections
- Posted by mattlewis (admin) Nov 05, 2012
- 2873 views
Yeah...I'm not really very interested in what former slave owners thought about things. In fact, the 1920s were incredibly prosperous, and not just for the upper classes.
Until we hit the Great Depression, sure.
Yeah, largely created by the crazy tarrifs, and then New Deal kept the depression going. 
The problem is that free market capitalism almost always ends up treating labor as a necessary commodity. If the price of that commodity can be reduced then the price of the goods can be reduced and the less expensive goods will prevail in the market place.
That's a feature, not a bug! Ask the millions of Chinese
Only millions? Perhaps you're thinking about Taiwan. I certainly agree that Taiwan has done things right.
Or perhaps Hong Kong. Again, I agree.
I've heard Red China's demographics described as a US worth of middle / upper class plus a billion peasants. Taiwan and Hong Kong have obviously done much better than the mainland.
who have recently moved out of the middle ages.
Middle ages? China was technologically superior to almost everywhere else until the 19th century.
Yes, but that was all before Mao. But I'll admit, Middle Ages was a bit of hyperbole.
Ask the people who shop at places like Walmart and have a better standard of living as the result of lower prices.
Better standard of living?
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/08/10/how-everyday-low-prices-are-costing-americans-their-jobs/
Okay.
Yes. Totally. Unfortunately, sustained increases in standards of living requires innovation and creative destruction, which means that people who don't or cannot adjust are hurt. Still, poor but feel good economics will always be with us.
Yes, the 1930s (and really, it started with Hoover...FDR just built on what he started) should have been enough to prove that when the government gets active and tries to make things better, it fails. Not unlike the other 20th century experiments in statism.
Failed enough to get him in the White House four times in a row.
Oh, yes, hugely successful politically. But a catastrophe economically.
But, if you were a coal miner, who got paid in company script which could only be used in company stores, I dare say you would view government support of the "right" of labor to collectively bargain for better wages and benefits very liberating.
Not very liberating to collectively bargain for nothing.
That's the point - they were collectively bargainning to get something.
When you don't have a job, and have no prospects of getting a job, with whom do you bargain?
I'm not arguing that people weren't taken advantage of. But the Wagner Act was and continues to be a disaster.
How?
Perhaps the most obvious example is our sclerotic unionized auto industry (note that the foreign owned, non-union plants have been doing just fine). Of course, even FDR could not support public sector unions. The market eventually sorts out private sector union excesses. It's much more difficult to get rid of the problems with public sector unions.
Matt
