Slashdot Mirror

though actually you are also wrong there

Maybe not. A Seattle Times Op-ed counterpoint brings up issues with the study that seem worth considering:

Specifically, let’s look at all the workers who are simply left out of the analysis. By the UW team’s own admission, nearly 40 percent of the city’s low-wage workforce is excluded from the data: workers at multisite employers like Nordstrom, Starbucks, or even restaurants with a few locations like Dick’s. Even worse, any time a worker left a job with a single-site employer for one with a chain, that was treated as a “lost job” that was blamed on the minimum wage — and that likely happened a lot since the minimum wage was higher for those large employers.

Similarly, every time an employer raised its pay above $19 per hour — like Jimmy John’s did — it was counted not as a better job, but as a low-wage job lost as a result of the minimum wage.

That's an op-ed, of course, and not a study correcting perceived defects and presented in opposition. But that might not be necessary, per a Fortune Op-ed counterpoint:

It also stands in contrast to a massive trove of actually credible studies showing that raising the minimum wage is a boon for working class families and the communities they live in.

For instance, a team led by Michael Reich, an economics professor at University of California-Berkeley, looked at the impact of the Seattle wage increase on the food industry over the same period and found that wages did in fact go up for restaurant workers, and that employment wasn’t affected. These findings were, they claim, “in line with the lion’s share of results in previous credible minimum wage studies.”
[...]
Employers see big benefits, too. Workers stay on the job longer, reducing turnover and training costs. They’re also significantly more productive, according to researchers studying wage increases in the United Kingdom.

The op-ed continues with studies/references for other aspects of the increased min wage.

there are "ethical" funds out that don't invest in "dumping trash in oceans, distributing child labor, sex trafficking" (I'm not sure which S&P500 companies do that last one on your list though) - but guess what? They make much poorer returns than funds who have no such restrictions.

No they don't. To quote from the abstract:

After controlling for investment style, we find no evidence of significant differences in risk-adjusted returns between ethical and conventional funds for the 1990â"2001 period.

Also more recently in the same vein:
https://ideas.repec.org/p/jau/...
http://link.springer.com/artic...

Of the $125 trillion the world is estimated to have in total wealth, just 10% of the world population has 71% of that wealth. That means roughly $36 trillion spread out over about 6.4 billion people, or an average of just over $5600 per person.

Can you think of a more accurate use of "like squeezing blood from a stone?"

This post mixes several phenomena and omits other factors relevant for the positions. For example, "Once people start to understand what's happening, they stop buying things.". There are situations where a falling price level and a drop in consumer expenditures correlated positively, but there are also situations where they correlate negatively. I for example tend to behave exactly the opposite way as you describe: when the price of bitcoin is falling, I tend to cut my expenditures, and when it's rising, I tend to increase the expenditures. It's not the only factor influencing my decisions of course.

A while ago, two economists working at the Minneapolis Fed published a paper: https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/... where they analyse the empirical link between deflation (i.e. a falling price level) and depression, and find that outside of the Great Depression in the 1930s they can't find such a connection. They write: "A broad historical look finds many more periods of deflation with reasonable growth than with depression and many more periods of depression with inflation than with deflation."

As the Austrian school explains, the business cycle is caused by fractional reserve banking, and the recession is a necessary consequence of the misallocations that happen during the boom preceding the recession. But since mainstream economic schools lack a theory of capital, instead they view the business cycle through aggregate values, they can't assess the argument this way.

I think it is not wealth, but rather education (specifically of the women) that has the biggest coefficient in a regression trying to model birthrates. That may be correlated with wealth, but not causally linked. Let's be careful with those undocumented assertions. E.g., this study (which I can no longer see as I am retired and do not have access to all the literature).

$7.5 million isn't rich

Uh, yes it is, if you're living on this planet. Your own math shows that! $125k annually is in the richest 0.07% of the world's population. It's more than 76 times the median income for Earth humans, according to Branko Milanovic.

Honestly, even in the USA, just 4 million in assets is rich. Affluenza rich. You'd pretty much have to be both insane and incompetent to fail to increase your wealth once you had 4 million in pocket. Hell, hire one honest accountant with an above average IQ and your 4 mil will easily keep both of you in cheesesteaks and hookers for your lifetime...

Here, you might find this an interesting tool for evaluating what "rich" is.

I don't pay too much attention to the Daily Mail. They have turned out to be unreliable too many times in the past. I've even caught them intentionally lying about some issues with global warming.

The 2nd chart in the article I used is from the US Census. I think that's pretty reliable.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new01_001.htm

For the top 1% worldwide I used this:

http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwphe/0305002.html

And the calculator here:

http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/why-give/how-rich-am-i

which is based on the above.

Now that we know that there is a problem, and that the problem is not helped by changing the sex of the hirers, we have to minimize the bias by hiding the sex of the applicants during the application process for as long as possible.

There was a similar problem in hiring for orchestras. They started doing blind auditions (players behind a screen) and a lot of the hiring bias went away.

The biggest problem will be getting scientists to admit that this is a serious issue that won't go away without effort. This study needs to be replicated, a lot, and to survive serious peer review.

Seeing as the Japanese justice system has a 99.97% conviction rate they must have an airtight case against these guys.

Indeed, the world is getting richer. Since 2000, 28 countries have moved from "poor" to "middle income".

The percent of people in the world living on less than $1.25 a day has fell from 52% to 26% between 1981 and 2005. In China alone, 600 million people have left the under $1.25 per day income line during that period.

The best thing you can do to help the poor people of the planet is to buy something. It is likely that is was either built by people poorer than you, or that at least the raw materials were mined or processed by people poorer than you, and they are benefiting from your commerce, and you are benefitting as well.

The second best thing you can do is to fully appreciate free market capitalism and espouse it publicly, because the poorest countries are those with the least economic freedom and most government regulation of the economy.

This guy knows more about the markets and the economy than you or the vast majority of respected "economists" ever will.

For one, I am not an economist, and I never claimed to be one. For another, if you are making sweeping statements like that, you'd better back them up. The man does not even have a single publication, peer reviewed or otherwise, on either RepEc or SSRN.

I'm sorry, but it would be akin to a random blogger on physics claiming to know more about "physics" without having a single peer reviewed or refereed publication on the topic.

And the big difference is that he's willing to tell the truth.

...and what truth would that be? We all know what some of the symptoms are, and we all know directionally what the solutions at addressing those symptoms might be. But that in no way makes us capable or knowledgeable in understanding -- much less fixing -- the root cause of the problem. My wife's grandmother watches House and thinks she can be a doctor, and random guys read yet another "expert" and think they know everything there is to on fixing the economy. Oh the irony.

The garbage you spew forth is typical of what the main stream media feeds the populace and you do a disservice to people as a whole by repeating it. Let me guess, you finished a couple of university courses on Keynesian economics and now you're the expert who parrots "supply & demand!" in any thread economical...

What garbage have I spewed forth? Calling forth some skepticism? But I suppose if you cannot refute the argument, why not resort to unintelligent, ad hominem attacks, right?

Denninger was a Tea Party'er before they got high-jacked by the fools that now run it in a completely different direction. He no longer has anything to do with them and frequently rails on their antics. Denninger is also NOT a "hardcore gold standard" guy, so that shows how misinformed the slurs against him are.

I could care less for his party affiliations -- I am more interested in his content and qualifications, both of which are suspect at best.

Seriously, he's one of the few beacons of light in the sea of misinformation and outright bullshit coming from the usual suspects.

How so? Please explain.

Let's face it. Markets are complex systems, not unlike the ecology of our planet. Even after lifetimes of study, we've barely grazed our understanding of the subject. Modern markets as we know are really, really young, and incredibly complex. What more, unlike nature's ecology, market dynamics include a feedback and randomness introduced by the human element.

Anyone who has the gall to say that they've "understood" such a system, or worse yet, offer solutions in fixing the problems thereof, better have some pretty mighty empirical data to back them up. The people who caused this problem were two-penny "economists" who did not understand such systems, and Karl Denninger is no less a charlatan than any of them.

Yeah, funny thing about Somalia. They actually are doing better off with anarchy than they did under the "Scientific Socialist" authoritarian government that came before it.

http://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jcecon/v35y2007i4p689-710.html

To equate a Liberal Brainwashing with being Liberal is a stretch. There are many of us who are able to weather the experience with some level of grace.

To equate increased welfare with decreased crime is as far as I can tell just not a realistic assertion. This is especially if you are talking about clasic no strings attached welfare.

Forcing Welfare Receipients To Work Decreases Crime - Danish
http://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/1236.html

Welfare Promotes Single Parent Families Which Promots Crime - USA
http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/the-effects-of-welfare-reform
http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-wc67.html

Previous studies have pointed to the gene being related to impulsivity, a lack of thinking though the consequence of your actions. I think you have a much better chance of finding the roots of modern liberalism there...

The US penalizes innovation and experimentation more than anyone.

Really?! For a country that penalizes this stuff more than anybody else, we sure do whole lot of it!

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_res_and_dev_exp_of_gdp-economy-research-development-expenditure-gdp
http://ideas.repec.org/a/eaa/eerese/v5y2005i5_9.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation#Measures

Perhaps next time you should engage your brain before spouting off Slashdot banalities designed to curry you favor with the mods!

Money can reduce volunteer activity, crowding it out with a smaller pool of paid developers.

http://ideas.repec.org/p/prt/dpaper/3_2009.html is one of many papers on this topic.

I've recently had very bad news in my family - in the space of two weeks, my uncle has been told he needs heart surgery, and my mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer. My uncle has been scheduled for surgery on 15th of this month, and my mother has put off her appointment (originally on the 11th) because I'm getting married on the 12th. She'll be going under the knife on 19th instead. My uncle will be missing the wedding, but we're going to stream it live so he can watch it in the UK, even if it is at midnight over there :)

I thank my lucky stars we're from the UK, because there's just no way our family could afford their treatment over here in the USA - my uncle's heart surgery would cost circa $175,000, my mother's cancer treatment and subsequent costs could come to circa $100,000. We've never had money - I was the first kid in our family to go to college for example, and I had to pay my way through that. We've always scraped-by and made-do, mother and father working, grandmother looking after the kids etc. Over here, I'm lucky in that I have an excellent medical insurance plan from my company, but my fiancee didn't have medical insurance until we met. She used to try not to visit a doctor, to self-medicate via a drugstore if something was wrong. I was horrified that someone would even consider that. Seriously and truthfully - I was aghast that a visit to the doctors wasn't just "what you'd do if you're not feeling well". It's just a no-brainer from my (and anyone from the UK, I suspect) perspective.

For her part, my mother gets personal visits in her home from the MacMillan nurse (cancer specialist nurses, there to answer any questions, give advice, as well as do the nursing stuff), and she has one of the best surgical teams in the country ready to operate when she gets back to the UK. All of this is standard-stuff, she pays her dues (in her taxes / national insurance contributions), and she has the peace-of-mind that comes from knowing she has access to excellent health-care whenever she wants it, without being suddenly landed with huge bills, and without any worry of 'recission' by a financially-orientated insurance company.

There's a lot I like (even prefer) about the USA, but the healthcare system is (from an outsiders perspective) a badge of shame. Everyone gets sick eventually, and everyone dies eventually. Any civilised country ought to recognise and cope with that such that people don't fall through the cracks. The NHS in the UK isn't perfect - you'll frequently hear Brits complaining about it - but it's head, shoulders, and torso above the system over here. I still pay my 'national insurance' in the UK, even though I live in the US - the cost is minimal (about £15/month), and I don't mind helping fund something today that I (or, say, a member of my family) might make use of tomorrow. To me, it's beyond belief that people in the USA fight *against* a similar system, but hey, each to their own. I don't get to vote over here so it's not as though I can do anything about it...

Bottom line: In the UK, health follows an almost burger-king like mantra - "you need it? You got it!" whereas in the USA, you're trusting your health and possibly your life to the same sort of company that screws you over if someone hits your car - an insurance company that has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders. After the last few weeks, I'm pretty darn certain which of the two models I prefer.

From our perspective, the good news is that my mother pulled through, both her and my uncle are on medicines for the rest of her life (free, of course) and my mother has just finished the chemotherapy, so she's feeling a little fragile atm, but she made it; anything else is irrelevant.

Simon.

This would be amazing for people living in mine riddled countries.

This made me wonder what countries have produced the most land mines. I didn't find my
answer but did stumble upon this paper with an amazing estimate:

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines production and use estimates that there are more than 80 billion landmines in the ground in more than 80 countries.

the USA

So does Cuba, does that mean we should follow Cuba's lead?

There are waits for some procedures for stuff that won't kill you. If you have a serious illness you get to see a doctor and whatever specialist is required within hours in most cases.

Canada has no rationing? None at all? Waiting for surgery isn't as bad in Canada? Wait tymes weren't at an all-time high in Canada? Average waiting tymes in Canada for surgery isn't 16 weeks?

Falcon

Unless it's a prank call (and even then, you normally just get a ticking-off by an irate policeman from what I've read), when would any emergency-service make you PAY for its use ? Isn't the whole point of an emergency service to be there when you need it ? What the hell do you do if you can't afford an emergency service ?

I'm guessing the whole 'paying' idea is a USA thing, although my apologies to the US for assuming that, if there's anywhere else that's so screwed up that they make you pay for essential services.

I've recently had very bad news in my family - in the space of two weeks, my uncle has been told he needs heart surgery, and my mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer. My uncle has been scheduled for surgery on 15th of this month, and my mother has put off her appointment (originally on the 11th) because I'm getting married on the 12th. She'll be going under the knife on 19th instead. My uncle will be missing the wedding, but we're going to stream it live so he can watch it in the UK, even if it is at midnight over there :)

I thank my lucky stars we're from the UK, because there's just no way our family could afford their treatment over here in the USA - my uncle's heart surgery would cost circa $175,000, my mother's cancer treatment and subsequent costs could come to circa $100,000. We've never had money - I was the first kid in our family to go to college for example, and I had to pay my way through that. We've always scraped-by and made-do, mother and father working, grandmother looking after the kids etc. Over here, I'm lucky in that I have an excellent medical insurance plan from my company, but my fiancee didn't have medical insurance until we met. She used to try not to visit a doctor, to self-medicate via a drugstore if something was wrong. I was horrified that someone would even consider that. Seriously and truthfully - I was aghast that a visit to the doctors wasn't just "what you'd do if you're not feeling well". It's just a no-brainer from my (and anyone from the UK, I suspect) perspective.

For her part, my mother gets personal visits in her home from the MacMillan nurse (cancer specialist nurses, there to answer any questions, give advice, as well as do the nursing stuff), and she has one of the best surgical teams in the country ready to operate when she gets back to the UK. All of this is standard-stuff, she pays her dues (in her taxes / national insurance contributions), and she has the peace-of-mind that comes from knowing she has access to excellent health-care whenever she wants it, without being suddenly landed with huge bills, and without any worry of 'recission' by a financially-orientated insurance company.

There's a lot I like (even prefer) about the USA, but the healthcare system is (from an outsiders perspective) a badge of shame. Everyone gets sick eventually, and everyone dies eventually. Any civilised country ought to recognise and cope with that such that people don't fall through the cracks. The NHS in the UK isn't perfect - you'll frequently hear Brits complaining about it - but it's head, shoulders, and torso above the system over here. I still pay my 'national insurance' in the UK, even though I live in the US - the cost is minimal (about £15/month), and I don't mind helping fund something today that I (or, say, a member of my family) might make use of tomorrow. To me, it's beyond belief that people in the USA fight *against* a similar system, but hey, each to their own. I don't get to vote over here so it's not as though I can do anything about it...

Bottom line: In the UK, health follows an almost burger-king like mantra - "you need it? You got it!" whereas in the USA, you're trusting your health and possibly your life to the same sort of company that screws you

To begin with, you can always make money on your idea with first mover advantage. What most patentees want is to have residual income from their work, you know, like multilevel marketing. In other words, they should be able to sit back, relax and watch the checks roll in. Patents have a strong tendency to replace R & D efforts, especially in large organizations (see Bessen and Hunt, 2004).

The problems with patents are many, but mainly attributable to the fact that human insecurity and greed get in the way. The book, "Against Intellectual Monopoly" by Michelle Boldrin and David Levine, details an incredibly unflattering history of our many attempts to get it right with both patents and copyrights. And Thomas Jefferson, one of the framers of our Constitution, had serious reservations about patents, almost 200 years ago. His observations still hold true to this day.

The same problems seen then, are seen now. No one can say for sure what is patentable. Lawyers will always write claims so broad it takes a court to figure it out. And patentees will always seek stronger enforcement without providing a clear way to give notice to everyone that they own a particular idea. Worse, they devise submarine patents to let others work until there is enough money to sue for. The only cure is to remove patents altogether and watch innovation take off (inventors would rather tinker than to search for patents). As far as I can tell, the notion that "patents encourage innovation" is an assumption made by economists and nothing more. There are no studies that show conclusively, that patents actually encourage innovation. None.

The fugitive fermentations of a brain belong to no one and are shared by all once divulged, for their inspirations come from all of us. Patentees need to read up on the word Ubuntu, which means I am me because of all of you. And considering the size and quantity of problems facing the human race, cooperation and collaboration is a lot more important than claiming the prize while our Earth dies.

So there.

Hmmm. Looking to the Forbes top 20 to use as an example of your average American seems suspect. Also Forbes does not include mega rich families like the Rothschilds or Rockerfellers, who do a great job of splitting up and hiding their wealth in institutions. For FACTS read this (by the White house Economic council):- "The Role of Intergenerational Transfers in Aggregate Capital Accumulation" http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/0445.html Quote:-"only a negligible fraction of actual capital accumulation can be traced to, life-cycle or "hump" savings."

I've read a few other articles on your site and I basically conclude it's another "justice before actual data" science. Their version of justice, of course.

Let's take the top article on the front page (http://socyberty.com/issues/affirmative-action-policy-vs-anti-affirmative-action/), it describes the lofty affirmative action policies. Obviously it falls in the trap that the whole left has fallen into : it claims anti-white racism is affirmative action. Such a position will obviously push racism, both by allowing many people to be racist supported by law and by breeding resentment in the group being discriminated against.

It heaps all sorts of praises on those policies, and yet it somehow misses the little detail that pro-centrally-controlled-society sites always miss : We've had these policies for a while, what effect have they had ? What are the numbers ?

Regardless even of whether the effect of affirmative action was positive or negative (which is another discussion), the results of the past implementations should be the first thing to guide future implementations.

Obviously, performance in the real world is not even mentioned in the article.

Why are so anti-real-world-data ? In my not so humble opinion for a simple reason : they don't care. They are merely interested in pushing "fair" rules on society (according to their standard obviously, and if I may say so not very well reasoned), and what effect these rules have ? They don't know, they're not interested, they don't even want to know, please nobody tell us. The only thing that matters to them is whether their rules are pushed on society. They may not explicitly say using force, but given the rules they intend to push it's clear massive violence will be required to kill the non-believers, and if their rules are even slightly unbalanced, much more violence to kill the ones who see the evidence of failure before them. They are massively anti-freedom. They are literally against freedom of thought.

Such a site cannot function as an authorative source, for obvious reasons : it has a thinly veiled ideological agenda, and a relatively extreme one at that.

And Keynes was for direct government control of markets. Direct interference through every available means, in all markets. Without limitation, without consideration of the expected effects. That does not make him a "moderate" capitalist, it makes him a moderate communist, also known as a fascist (can we please avoid references to that particular fascist, please ? Yes socialists used to be in favor of eugenics and he drove that a bit far (not that Stalin didn't drive it further, but hey, even Che didn't believe Stalin was a "rightwing hawk", and we've got to tell people all evil is from the right, right ? Even if it means massively "bending the truth" about fascism : that it's merely moderate socialism), anyway the socialist eugenics theory has little bearing on today's situation since now socialists believe (wrongly) the total opposite) Back to Keynes. He advocated direct government control of markets, but without totally destroying the market forces ("totally" being a necessary qualifier). And he does indeed show all other marks of fascism : he is in favor of a welfare state. He is in favor of huge public firms supported by tax funds. And yes, before the consequences of his politics became clear, he was indeed in favor of Nazi Germany.

He is a moderate communist (they like to be called socialists, and to be frank, they are correct for any reasonable definition of socialist). He is a fascist.

And this is a much more reliable paper analysing the political position of John Maynard Keynes. Written by 2 actual economists. John Maynard Keynes, Socialism And Economic Policy Of Nazi Germany.

James Bessen and Robert Hunt did some interesting research at the federal reserve. What they found is that software patents tend to substitute for R&D. The study shows that over a 20 year period, investment in R&D suffered a major decline, apparently to finance software patents, patent searches, litigation and the like.

That might be a better explanation for the decline in IT perceived by Siebel. Or, maybe Siebel isn't happy with his patent portfolio.

You can find that study here.

According to this paper, optimal copyright duration is 14-15 years.

Bandwidth is like highways, the real cost is in the laying process, once you've done that, the maintenance is marginal when you compare it to the original cost.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Road maintenance over the useful life is a huge fraction of the total cost and is directly correlated with the number of vehicles that use the road, especially 18-wheelers. More trucks means more frequent maintenance which adds up very quickly.

http://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/vtiwps/2007_007.html

This is something I strongly agree with. We (and, by 'we' I mean the western world, not any specific country) can't keep passing environmental and labour laws, and maintain free trade. The end result will be that everything is produced in places without them.

Studies show that as income increases people's care for the environment also increases. This is part of the Kuznets curve. Partially the way it works is that at first people are just concerned about living, eating, and having a roof over their head without having to work all the tyme. But as people make more they become concerned about their environment as well. Afterall why be concerned about pollution if you don't have enough to eat? This extends to health as well as work conditions.

We should encourage free trade, but only with countries that mandate a minimum level of worker and environmental protection

Many in the Third World see this as a way to keep them from improving their lives.

Falcon

If the Chinese got ahold of that new laser weapon system from Northrop Grumman, I doubt you would make such a neat little dichotomy there between industrial espionage and national security.

right, but this guy didn't get a hold of a new laser weapon, or any other type of weapon. that's the whole point. what he stole had nothing to do with weapons research and everything to do with manned space flight and other space launch technology:

Shu, 68, pleaded guilty to violating the Arms Export Control Act by helping Chinese officials based at the space facility on southern Hainan island to develop manned space flight and future missions to the Moon.

He also acknowledged he had sent them in December 2003 a specific military document detailing the design of liquid hydrogen tanks crucial to launching vehicles into space, the Justice Department said in a statement.

it's like saying, "well you wouldn't be able to say that he didn't assassinate the president if he had assassinated the president." it's a moot point, because that's not what happened.

besides, i thought we were past racial/gender/religious discrimination in the workplace. do we really want to push America back 40 years and undo all of the social/cultural progress made by the Civl Rights movement?

xenophobia isn't exactly conducive of societal progress or technological advancement. in fact, it's been shown that cultural diversity promotes innovation and enhances work performance, particularly in the R&D sector.

Computers don't change the intelligence of kids, but they may help their motivation.

While research shows IQ is highly heritable (heritability of IQ between 0.4 and 0.8 in the United States), some of it clearly is not, which may be the key to the Flynn Effect of rises in average IQ in economically developed countries.

It is possible that some of the marginal non-heritable IQ rise is due to exposure to complex and challenging mental stimulation of children. In which case, computers may change the intelligence of kids if they are used in a constructive way.

Almost any marginal gain in IQ is likely to enhance lifetime earnings (though perhaps not as much as we once thought), so it is a good idea to encourage it.

Of course, whether a government-sponsored purchase of lots of computers for children will achieve IQ-enhancing results is a bigger question - the question is how they are used, if at all, and what traditional instruction their use may crowd out.

Of course, the long-term solution is genetic engineering for higher IQ....

Luckily for the advertisers, the oldies are holding all the cash anyway. Now the hard part, how to get the tight-fisted old curmudgeons to let go of it...

Do you have any evidence for this? I have evidence against it: http://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v82y1992i4p756-72.html

In general there are such things as natural monopolies, and there are definitely scale advantages to centralised collection. Would fermi lab have even been funded if it had to collect money from individuals directly?

(That is not to say that a centrally managed distribution scheme is not subject to fraud etc, but that is an independent problem and thus techniques to solve it apply to both approaches)

And then there is the pathetic state of the US health system ($250 for a GP visit?! In socialist Australia the total cost for a GP is about $80 and the service is better too).

The American Medical Association restricts the supply of MDs, and by law you can't get most medical care from anyone who isn't an MD.

AC is correct: you cannot be a "realtor." You can be a "REALTOR" (Registered trademark) if the National Association of Realtors permits it.

Both restrict capacity of the labor in their industries. This is known to create at best Cournot competition. Meanwhile, a market that is not capacity constrained has Betrand competition - where the mere threat of entry can keep prices near their minimum. Cournot competition reduces economic efficiency (id est, screws you out of money).

I'd estimate the average working American is getting "screwed" (how much he pays less what a competitive market would cost) by about $6,000 per year (of the approximately $16,000/yr of medical expense he and his company pay). Your paycheck is probably light by $500 per month due to the AMA tax.

It is also worth noting that a supply shortage of saved lives is equivalent to preventable deaths. This artificial shortage raises prices of having your life saved while simultaneously reducing your odds of having your life saved.

The AMA and NAR are de facto monopsonists, restricting the ease of health care and real estate purchase respectively, and using your medical bills and need for housing to make their members artificially richer.

Don't believe that doctors are getting paid "too much"? See if you can find the trend in the Forbes best paying jobs in America:
1. Anesthesiologist
2. Surgeon
3. Obstetrician
4. Orthodontist
5. Oral Surgeon
6. Internist
7. Prosthodontist
8. Psychiatrist
9. General Practitioner
10. Chief Executive Officer
11. Physician and Surgeon, Other
12. Pediatrician
13. Dentist
14. Airline Pilot
15. Podiatrist
16. Lawyer

Productivity in the US has been going up steadily over the last decade, but real median income has gone down. Where does all that extra money go that you're not getting paid? Your company spends it on health insurance, most of which ends up in the hands of MDs.

OPEC dominates the trillion dollar global petroleum industry. The AMA dominates the two trillion dollar national medical industry. Politicians blame OPEC for our economy because doctors write big checks.

And the fact that you can't point to a single real world example of your proposal working leads me to conclude that you haven't thought it through. Since this "basic economics" is so obvious, do you really think you're the first one to think of it?

It's kind of hard to point to a real world example of what I advocate, a free market for health care, when one does not exist. I can however point to socialized medical systems that didn't work, the former Soviet Republics. And I hope you don't need surgery in Canada: Restricted government spending along with universal health insurance has led to longer queues for surgical procedures in Canada versus the United States." And someone has to pay for research: "High US Medical Spending Spurs Innovation".

Health care is already rationed. Everything is rationed when demand exceeds supply. It's just that in a "free market", it's rationed by price: the scarce resources go to the people who are willing and/or able to pay the most for them.

And under socialized medicine it comes to whomever has the most clout or can afford to pay more.

I contend, and a majority of American citizens and doctors apparently agree, that rationing health care by price is a poor way to do it. If 100 people want to see a doctor, but the doctor only has time to see half of them, we would prefer him to see the 50 sickest people -- but a free market will inevitably lead him to see the 50 wealthiest people instead.

In a free market more people would want to be medical professionals, more doctors can see more patients. in a free market midwives could deliver babes in homes thus reducing significantly the cost of child birth. Many doctors perform C sections unnecessarily which drives up costs as well. In a free market groups could bargain for lower cost drugs. Heck Walmart has pledged, and is, offering to sell many prescription drugs for no more than $10. When I last had insurance I had 3 prescriptions, one of them cost more than $100 even with insurance. If however I had been able to join with others who needed the drug we could have bargained to buy it in bulk at a lower price.

I contend, and a majority of American citizens and doctors apparently agree, that rationing health care by price is a poor way to do it.

Oh, I agree that any one who wants health care should be able to get it but I also believe the best way to lower costs so everyone can afford it is by having a free market.

Even in Canada and the UK, which conservatives love to hold up as shameful examples of The Evils Of Socialism, you'll find millions of satisfied customers who wouldn't dream of going back to a private system.

"Canada's Expectant Moms Heading to U.S. to Deliver". While some Americans, US citizens, go to Canada to buy drugs Canadians come to the US for surgery.

The solutions are simple. Allow more choice and allow people huge tax deductions for their choices.

Any real-world examples of a system like this actually working?

There are no real-world examples of a free market in health care.

cheap crap coming out of China.

Even Japan and Korea have been forced to manufacture in China, and Chinese companies DO realize that they have to improve or else...:

Japanese management style in China? Production practices in ...
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-005X.00058

Location decisions of Japanese new manufacturing plants in China ...
http://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/anresc/v40y2006i2p369-387.html

Even way back in 2002:

Samsung, LG Relocating Plants to China| Korea.net News
http://www.kois.go.kr/news/news/newsView.asp?serial_no=20020505006&part=104&SearchDay=2002.05.06

I find it hypocritical that US and wester nations (but the US, particularly) will spew volumes of criticism against China when just recently we have facing us a 143 million pounds beef recall. We endured selenium and other chemicals and metals in our water supply, with government not being aggressive enough on some offenders.

Granted, it is totally unacceptable for any company to produce goods containing lead, arsenic, other toxins, or flaking/dangerous matter.

Yeah, those Canadians sure are happy with their health care. There are pros and cons to all systems. You pay less directly overall in Canada, but you have longer waiting times and higher taxes.

Duverger's law

A Mathematical Proof of Duverger's Law
only ref to paper, paper is unfortunately not directly accessible

"fractional reserve banking as economic parasitism"

endorsed by two phd economists. printed in nexus magazine, 60k world circulation. #1 top downloaded economics paper. used by economics teacher in australia as standard classroom material.

more info on request.

as for the book, for those saying that it is a conspiracy theory, who says? which part? it is true that history in retrospect often looks like a conspiracy.

as for those who ask, whats the point? well think about it this way. theres a lot of new online services that are experimenting with currency and microcurrency. consider Linden Labs & 2nd life. they have a fully functioning online/cyber economy with an exchange rate. what is the dynamics of that system? the paper considers that.

also, economics is a complex system. there is a new science of complex systems. cyberspace is a complex system. the web is a complex system. understanding one complex system will help us understand other complex systems. the economic system has many parallels to engineering fields also, such as electrical engineering. but because there is so far no science of "money engineering", few are aware of this connection.

many slashdot readers are interested in security, such as regarding viruses etcetera. the paper reveals that the banking and economic system can have worms, viruses, parasites, trojan horses, very much like cyberspace. in fact the security of our banking system may be very poor, and in dire need of improved engineering approaches to increase its security. it really needs the kind of first rate minds that build complex software systems.

the money system is in fact very much like a massive electrical or energy system. if you are concerned with cooling your cpu or optimizing its performance, imagine a machine that spans entire states, countries even. how can it be optimized? to what degree is it failing us? what are its design deficiencies?

consider the goethe quote. "none are more enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free"

some very interesting recent supporting material:

• The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism
• Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
• John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption"
• Video, senator/pres candidate Dennis Kucinich at last years 2005 Monetary Reform Conference
• money as debt video by Grignon

"while from the research that has been done happiness does not seem to be significantly a function of wealth or life expectancy"

The research I've seen disagrees with basically everything in this sentence. Happiness is highly correlated with wealth and longevity.

http://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/hastef/0207.html

"Would you eat [range of animal from cute to humans] slaughtered industrially for meat?"

- sure, as long as it's meets : http://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfpoli/v30y2005i3p270 -283.html I don't really see a problem... oh wait that wasn't the point, was it?

"Carnegie was a motherfucker who built museums and contributed to charity to make himself feel better at the end of his days when he thought back to how many died to build that fortune."

"I don't remember hearing anything about his descendants. If he has any, they certainly know how to keep a lower profile than Paris."

For another facet of Andrew Carnegie, consider the Carnegie Conjecture. In a nutshell, Andy believed that large inheritances resulted in less motivated and less ethical heirs.

This:

http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4118.html ... is an interesting study concerning that conjecture.

"you do know that 79% of the tax burden is carried by the top 20% of income earners, right?"

You mean those folks that hold the vast majority of the assets? Sure just cherry pick a single statistic from a single source and proclaim 'look what I know, you dip shits didn't know this did you, huh, huh?'. Look the issue here is just how out of balance things can get EITHER way before it breaks the system. The balance right now grossly favors those at the top of the economic food chain. If it continues to the point of breakdown just what do you think the fate of the top x% will be? In the end it is in everyones interest to not break the frickin system.

"Maybe for once we should stop being partisan"

Yea, thats rich, considering the drivel to from the "conservative" party I have listened with great restraint, and admittedly often with amusement, for most my life. Can you make a clear argument just using common sense instead of falling back on a single cherry picked statistic form BillO's list of "facts" to throw at a liberal---remember you have to use this word in with a dirty slur pretext or voice. Don't take this to mean I am a just another sheep in the Democratic flock, which in contrast to the Republican flock, is actually more like a herd of cats anyway. I will say I like many others are sick of the "good cop - bad cop" routine the two parties have used so successfully for so many years. So exactly whose drivel is it you like best? Oh thats right you like to quote the "fiducially conservative ones", hehehe, yea.

Wabi-Sabi
Matthew

read...

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2 007/20070206/default.htm

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f5e905ce-69d8-11db-952e-00 00779e2340.html

http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/povert y_and_inequality/index.html

http://www.chicagofed.org/economic_research_and_da ta/wp_abstract.cfm?pubsID=732

http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03may/may03 interviewswolff.html

http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?st ory_id=7055911

http://ideas.repec.org/a/ecj/econjl/v112y2002i478p c68-c73.htm

http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2004/0704tilly .html

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18995

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11418244330 8492484.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/71954e1a-ad43-11da-9643-00 00779e2340,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http% 3A%2F%2Fnews.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F71954e1a-ad43-11da -9643-0000779e2340.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fne weconomist.blogs.com%2Fnew_economist%2Fpoverty_and _inequality%2Findex.html

http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/

After some effort, I found the actual article. The popular press account was bad, even for the popular press, failing to give the title of the paper and giving the author's name only parenthetically.

In any event, here is the article: http://ideas.repec.org/p/wrk/warwec/785.html

The article contains at least one claim to "significance at the 5% level" but as far as I can see it is a working paper, not (yet) published in a refereed venue. The author appears to have other credible publications relating to the effect of windfalls on people.

You description of the French resistance is more than a bit beside the point. It does nothing to refute the principal I presented. The Allies provided them with one shot pistols and the loosely chambered guns I mentioned were the submachine guns you reference. The point was, an armed resistance with weaponry inferior to those of the people they are fighting, can make a difference. You've basically provided zero evidence that small arms like handguns are ineffective in a civil insurrection. Until you do so, you have done nothing to support your opinion. Not that it matters as it is only one, minor point. They might be useful. There is no proof to the contrary, so lacking other reasons, why should they be banned?

The guns the Resistance were armed with were equivalent to what the German soliders had. So, no, The french resistence's use of arms (or lack thereof) does not support your argument that the guns owned by US civilians are likely to make any difference to civil defence. The Resistances' overall victory dependend very much on the overwhelming force brought to bare by the Allied invasion and on the fact that they were armed, supported, directed, and even managed (at a unit level with Allied soldier/spies on the ground) by the Allies. This is not the organic and highly successful civil defence scenario you advocate. If anything, it lends support to the argument that personally owned arms for civil defence are next to useless and that we should wait for a foreign power to airdrop them to us.

Who argued that there should not be training and licensing requirements? This is a strawman.

You, at least, implied as much. mandatory training would be of a benefit to this goal, but I'm unconvinced the benefit of that training outweighs the restriction on people's freedom to run their own lives that it would entail.. You are certainly not arguing for training. Without training-being-linked to gun-ownership I have a hard time swallowing the civil defence rationale at all--especially in the day of the professional army (most of the population knowing damn little about basic combat and the professionals knowing infinitely more--amongst their many other advantages)

How do you define "poverty?" Usually it is a measure of wealth disparity within a country or locality. A person below the poverty level in the US has a higher quality of living and a great deal more wealth than a fairly wealthy person in other parts of the world.

By "poverty" I refer to the state of lacking the means (or purchasing power) to care for oneself according to reasonable standards (e.g., eat a decent meal, live in a safe dwelling, care for their children, etc). Although some people may define poverty relative to, say, median income I do not think this is a particularly useful measure (it may be an easier one to measure, but it's not useful). We can compare poverty by accounting for inflation within the US and relative to purchasing power across the world.

So you're arguing that employment rates correlate more strongly with violent crime levels than wealth disparity does? I've never seen any study that supported this fact and I've read several that disagree.

You must have never studied the issue beyond your pro-gun soundbytes then because there is a mountain of evidence showing high degree of correlation: nationally, regionally, locally, and individually. It has been common knowledge by those on the front-lines (e.g., police, school adminstrators, criminologists, etc) that people that are either employed or in-school are _far_ less likely to commit crime, violent or otherwise.

http://www.justicepolicy.org/reports/CrimeRiseBack grounder6_1606.doc

http://i

Yeah, the article has a lot of FUD in it, and you're right on the 'feeding a village for $100' idiocy. (Maybe if their villages numbered about 5 people each and they ate nothing but bread and water for a year... And sometimes skipped the bread.) But assuming that the article is racist on the basis of the term 'these people'? How is that racist? Would you have preferred "Africans"? "Black people"? What? I'm willing to bet that if this whole subject was shifted to helping impovrished, starving (white) people in 3rd world Soviet Bloc countries, you wouldn't even bat an eyelash. And who is assuming that the 3rd world is sitting on their starving asses waiting for philanthropic 1st world handouts?

Maybe you hadn't noticed, but much of the 3rd world is starving, and not from any lack of effort on their part. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, "Well, if those goddamned Africans would just get off their lazy butts and make some food, there wouldn't even be a problem!" No, most people say, "Well, maybe if we gave them some food (and some medical aid too, since half their continent is dying of AIDS), they would have more chance to devote time and energy to other things. Like education, sanitation, and infrastructure." We in the 1st world are not just throwing money at the place and giving ourselves a pat on the back for good charity (though certainly there are many who do that [see: famous rich people]). There are groups and people who use their money and help out with food (and not just handing them some foodstuffs and hoping for the best. Actually teaching them to farm and giving them the impliments needed to do so). Groups and people who help out with medical aid, with the building of schools and hospitals and sanitation facilities, et cetera. And generally, it seems to be working.

It sounds to me like you're some hyper-PC, ultrasensative bozo who leaps at any opportunity to shout "Racism!" from the highest peak.

As the conviction rate in Japan exceeds 99%, we can be almost certain that this dangerous international economic terrorist is going to be kept off the streets for a long time. At last, Japanese listeners can be assured of hearing only 100% approved covers by the latest Pop Puppet of the Hour!

Arguably, this would be like taking issue with publicly funded roads and highways being used by private businesses to make money (i.e. the freight business). We're all paying for those roads, but without them they would be unable to make a profit.

I gather this wouldn't be such a point of contention if it a patent wasn't involved. This said, I believe this study agrees with your statement.

You make several claims that I believe are not supported by the empirical evidence. I'll pick a couple:

You suggest that new immigrants do not want to assimilate (or wish to do so less than immigrants in the past.

FACT: "the vast majority of immigrants speak English well. In 1990, only 1/4 of immigrants reported speaking English poorly or not at all" National Bureau of Economic Research

It is true that adults that arrive with poor English skills often continue to have poor English skills. This has always been the case to varying degrees, and is more related to critical periods in language acquisition (e.g., its easier for children to learn a new language than adults) than a general lack of effort or interest.

FACT: "Only 7 percent of the children of Latino immigrants speak Spanish as a primary language, and virtually none of their children do." Washington Post citing data from the Census Bueau, 2000

Overwhelming statistical evidence is that by children of immigrants, regardless of country of origin, are highly assimilated, much less tied to their parents country of origin than the United States.

OK, As long as i'm getting all empirical on your ass, I'll also add the following regarding the economic costs of illegal immigration:

FACT: "we find that the average immigrant family received $1,404 in welfare services in years 1-5 in the United States, $1,941 in years 6-10, $2,247 in years 11-15, and $2,279 in years 16-25. Natives averaged $2,279..."

and

FACT: "the average native family paid $3,008 in taxes in 1975. In comparison, immigrant families here 10 years paid $3,369, those here 11-15 years paid $3,564, and those here 16-25 years paid $3,592--in all those cases, substantially surpassing natives' payments."

Finally, this suggests "the consolidated data on services used and taxes paid show substantial differences to the benefit of natives: an average of $1,354 yearly for the first 5 years the immigrant families are in the United States, and $1,329, $1,525, and $1,383 for years 6-10, 11-15, and 16-25, respectively. These are the amounts that natives are enriched each year through the public coffers by each additional immigrant family on average. "

Julian L. Simon, Cato Institute and the National Immigrant Forum

ME: Alot of claims are often thrown around, about immigration and how it is somehow different from the past. I can't speak to your motives, but alot of what seems different these days is that our newest immigrants are brown people that the Europeans immigrants of the early 1900s just don't feel comfortable with. Statistically speaking, there seems to be little different about these new immigrants. Evidence suggests that they will become American as thuroughly as yesterday's immigrants and that America benefits enormously by their presence.

I say, welcome to America, and thank you for supporting me in my old age!

A recent study published in Portugal states that there is a relation between cheating and corruption:

http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/porfepwps/214.ht m

Abstract: Today's economics and business students are expected to be our future's business people and potentially our tomorrow's economic leaders and politicians. Thus, their beliefs and practices are likely to affect the definition of acceptable economics and business ethics. The empirical evaluation of the cheating phenomenon in academia has been almost exclusively focused on the US context, and the non-US studies involve, in general, a narrow scope of countries. In the present paper we perform a wide cross-country study on the determinants of economics and business undergraduate cheating which involves 21 countries from the American (4), European (14), Africa (2) and Oceania (1) Continents and 7213 students. We found that the average magnitude of copying among the economics and business undergraduates is quite high (62%) but with a significant cross-country heterogeneity. The probability of cheating is significantly lower in students enrolled in schools located in the Nordic or the US plus British Isles blocks when compared with their South Europe counterparts; quite surprisingly that probability is also lower for the African block. Distinctly, students enrolled in schools from the Western and especially from the Eastern Europe observe statistically significant higher propensities for perpetrating academic fraud. Our findings further suggest that average cheating propensity in academia is significantly correlated with 'real world' business corruption.

Disclaimer: not related to this study in anyway

Criticisms seem plausible at first glance, but they are false.

There are complex arguments that would be necessary to explain the issues involved that are assumptions of the maniac propaganda you mistakenly see as reasonable. Propaganda that is toned down != sound reasoning.

But they are complicated, tedious and boring. So it's unlikely you are going to investigate them.

Example: business cartels. Unions are really business cartels, detrimental to the workers as such in the widest sense, i.e. to wages and employment (high unemployment is in the interest of unions - workers need them when they are scared for their jobs, not when they can move onto another job). Evidence:

http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpla/0506005.html

http://right-to-work-laws.johnwcooper.com/

Walmart is a large employer. It makes business sense, selfish sense for unions to try to bash it into unionization. As unionization in the entire American economy is low, they are desperate for a convenient target to bash it politically and score points on top of it. Walmart has bad PR image, so unions decided to attack. It makes tactical sense.

Note: I am not defending Walmart. I merely note that their political enemy is no better. Walmart's selfish, but that doesn't make unions unselfish. They try to manipulate you by exploiting manicheistic (good vs. evil) picture that is very suggestive, but very inadequate.

Ecology: now that should be obvious. "Deep" ecologists would want just about any human activity other than berry-picking maybe vanished from this planet so it could sit there dumb and unconscious in its pristine beauty. But some targets are more politically apt for bashing than others, and Walmart politically makes good target, while individual drivers - voters - don't. Even though those are actually consumers that makes burning fossil fuels reality (the horror! the horror!) a result and enable Walmart to exist. Exterminate consumers and Walmart is naturally gone. So why attack symptom and not the cause?

Organic foods - isn't it obvious that it's a sort of cult really? Attacking Walmart is both self-satisfying for them and gives them publicity. No such thing as bad press.

Greed is not the only motivator - crankish obsession about some goal, like those of ecologists or organic food maniacs can be even stronger, mesianic in character. Ask sociologists about it.

In general, read Machiavelli and Orwell, plus some basic econ stuff, then you will be understand the issues involved - and no sooner.