Are there benefits to establishing and enforcing a global minimum wage?
The United States Department of Labor stipulates the federal minimum wage and regulates “compliance with labor standards.” Since 1990 economists have debated the benefits and disadvantages of federal minimum wage laws, some of the most heated debate rising from David Card and Alan Krueger’s landmark research on employment and minimum wage standards.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - Hope and Change?
Fear not...scripture says...
In Taft-Hartley 13:4:1 it says - "King Barry will make a speech...oceans will part...birds will sing...the sick will be healed...the dead shall rise and the minimum wage throughout the world will immediately rise to $25/hr."
..so it is written and so shall it be.
27 - Franco
Jason J. Campbell sez......
"I argue for the abuses inherent within a system of neoliberal economics and the practice of outsourcing labor."
Jason, kinkly show us any system, now, or since the dawn of man, that does not have inherent abuses. I ask you, is it the systems at fault, or is it man.
How is it that such controlers with such power to enforce what you propose are made of a finer clay then those they rule over?
Dose not the truth of the matter come down to individual freedom to purse life, liberty and property, and the goverments job being to protecting that freedom.
28 - Dave Nalle
I hope it's not painful when he shows it to you "kinkly", Franco.
Dave
29 - Franco
"I wonder if I had held Milton Friedman's head underwater long enough, if he'd pay me a million bucks, of his own free will of course, to get some air."
Ah, there she is, Cindy, the ad hominem queen herself, and denirer that the free market even exists. Now what was that new thing your pushing, oh ya, I am going to argue for more than a minimum wage--a guaranteed minimum income.
A guaranteed minimum income is something each of us controls based on how hard we are willing to work for it.
Make your arguement againt Milton Freedman to the people of Zimbabwe and see if they agree with you. However they first might ask you help them arrest and cage Robert Mugabe, his cronies, and his wife Grace Mugabe, the First
LadyShopper of Zimbabwe milking out her guaranteed minimum income on what's left of what used to be the bread basket of Africa.30 - Matthew T. Sussman
Not every country has an equal amount of rainfall, which is unfair. We need to have a global minimum monthly precipitation.
31 - Dan(Miller)
Mat -- A very good and very fair suggestion, even though you neglect the need for a global maximum monthly precipitation. Floods can be as harmful as droughts.
However, I think that a global optimum monthly precipitation should be mandated. That would be fairer, more just and certainly more moral.
Dan(ama)
32 - Cindy D
Franco,
I'm only offering the basic guaranteed income proposition for you Capitalists. It's a proposal based on improving a Capitalist society. It's really not my preference. But, you people need all the help you can get.
And please explain to me Franco how the "free market" exists outside your imagination.
...based on how hard we are willing to work for it.
Okay, try to answer this seriously:
Does everyone need more musical greeting cards and cheap x-mas ornaments?
Do we really need all this stuff?
33 - Dan(Miller)
Cindy D,
Does everyone need more musical greeting cards and cheap x-mas ornaments?
Do we really need all this stuff?
No, of course not; however, I suspect that a close reading of the stimulus package would find those and equally unnecessary trinkets included.
As to the basic guaranteed income, that will be OK provided that everyone's is above average.
Dan(Miller)
34 - Cindy D
"Do we really need all this stuff?"
No, of course not... (my straight man (parenthetical) (Dan) replies)
It might be said that many people in developed countries are actually overwhelmed with too much stuff, judging by all the shows and articles on how to get rid of it or organize it all.
So, one of the ideas that a minimum guaranteed income is based on is that we can likely cut out a lot of the things we make but don't really need.
Not only don't we need kids slaving in sweatshops over there to make other kids over here piles of junk that their parents toss into the trash after 3 uses, but it would be better for the environment not to be making all this unneeded stuff.
35 - Cindy D
...based on how hard we are willing to work for it. (Franco)
So, why would intelligent life forms continue to use a system where they have to work hard to make things they don't really need or use?
We're only here a few years. Why should we work hard?
36 - Cindy D
A basic income is a proposed system of social security, that periodically provides each citizen with a sum of money that is sufficient to live on.
The basics are laid out by Philippe Van Parijs, Professor of Economic and Social Ethics at the Université Catholique de Louvain, discusses some of the economic considerations.
French Economist and Philosopher Andre Gorz explained how the work ethic (no longer needed) creates economic crisis.
Some supporters of a basic guaranteed income:
“ I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective " the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. in
Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
In 1968, James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith and another 1,200 economists signed a document calling for the US Congress to introduce in that year a system of income guarantees and supplements.
37 - Franco
#32 " Cindy D
"I'm only offering the basic guaranteed income proposition for you Capitalists. It's a proposal based on improving a Capitalist society. It's really not my preference. But, you people need all the help you can get."
I see, and where dose your income derive from?
"And please explain to me Franco how the "free market" exists outside your imagination."
The “free market” has always existed from the dawn of man, it not only exists and always has, it is bigger then any group, any corporation, any state or nation. No one and nothing is bigger then the free market.
Groups, corporations, states and nations all try to screw with it all the time which creates interference for their advantage, mostly dishonest advantage sponging on the people conducting trade in it.
Case in point. A few months back when you asserted that the free market did not exist, oil was at around $140 a barrel, today its around $40 a barrel. This $100 dollar swing is caused by the free market (supply and demand) and noting else.
All the while it was at $140 and starting to fall, there were groups, corporations, states and nations trying ever trick in the book known to man to keep it up there for their personal advantage. All of their efforts were for not.
No one and nothing is bigger then the free market. It is the most powerful constant ecconomic force existing between men, whether free or enslaved.
". ...based on how hard we are willing to work for it."
Pure free market exchange: If I have a nice antique wooden box sitting aound my house and you liked it and offer me a basket of whole fresh tomatoes for it, if I don’t like whole tomatoes and don’t cook, it would not matter if you offered two baskets full.
But it you found out I liked real Italian spaggitie sauce, and you knew how to cook it good, and offered me a sample and I liked it, how many jars of sauce are you willing to offer me for the box. ...based on how hard we are willing to work for it.
If I said 14 jars and you said no 10, then I said a dozen, then you can freely decide how much you want the box ...based on how hard we are willing to work for it.
We can go squabble on about it in the free market exchange, I could say I want twelve jars because that will last me 6 months and then it will be all gone but you will still have the box. You can counter me by saying sure, but this sauce is healthy and will help you stay that way. And so on.
So we ether make a trade or not, but it’s all depending based on how hard we are willing to work for it.
"Does everyone need more musical greeting cards and cheap x-mas ornaments?"
Good point, probably not, but no one is forcing you to buy them in the “free market”. You’re free to say no.
Let the free market take care of it. If and when people stop buying them, the producer will stop making them " guaranteed!
38 - Bryan Myrick
Jason,
I disagree with the argument you make, but it is a very well-made argument. Congratulations on a very good piece of writing.
Bryan Myrick
39 - Franco
#35 " Cindy D
...based on how hard we are willing to work for it. (Franco)
So, why would intelligent life forms continue to use a system where they have to work hard to make things they don't really need or use?
What you think is a needless item, someone else my not. If it is truly needless no one will want it and it will not be produced. Would you spend your time producing something no one wanted? The free market is the great leveler for all products and services.
We're only here a few years. Why should we work hard?
You don’t have to work hard. You’re free to live how you want. Just don’t ask me to pay for it.
40 - Cindy D
Franco,
I'll answer each point.
1) I see, and where dose your income derive from?
I'm forced to live in a way I don't like. You know I am talking about proponents of Capitalism.
2) Markets have always existed. The "free market" is nothing more than a "nicer" word for Laissez-faire Capitalism.
Groups, corporations, states and nations all try to screw with it all the time which creates interference for their advantage, mostly dishonest advantage sponging on the people conducting trade in it.
Sounds like you're saying it doesn't work.
41 - Cindy D
Franco,
3) Case in point. A few months back when you asserted that the free market did not exist, oil was at around $140 a barrel, today its around $40 a barrel. This $100 dollar swing is caused by the free market (supply and demand) and noting else.
I was a day trader for almost 2 years. My suspicion is that the price change had more to do with speculators*. Another problem with "The Free Market" by the way.
4) No one and nothing is bigger then the free market.
I always thought it was a religion with you people.
5) It is the most powerful constant ecconomic force existing between men, whether free [otherwise known as Capitalists] or enslaved [otherwise known as people who work for them].
*60 Minutes
42 - Franco
((Groups, corporations, states and nations all try to screw with it all the time which creates interference for their advantage, mostly dishonest advantage sponging on the people conducting trade in it.))
"Sounds like you're saying it doesn't work."
Not all all, it always works and nothing and no one is bigger then it, and nothing can stop it, its just all the above makes it hard on all of us.
43 - Cindy D
Franco,
6) So we ether make a trade or not, but it's all depending based on how hard we are willing to work for it.
Good get me that free market and I might be inclined to join in my support. (this is the kind of market Lysander Spooner believed in, not that it's actually workable)
"...it's all based on how many other people are forced to work hard for
itus."You can keep this version.
7) You're free to say no.
Are children in sweatshops free to say no?
8) Let the free market take care of it.
It looks like "The Free Market" already has!
You sound like my mother. She says to hand things over to your "higher power." She can even give me evidence how this works. When I hand things over to my particular higher power, they tend to fall on the ground. "The Free Market" is a superstition.
44 - Cindy D
Franco,
Last but not least.
9) The free market is the great leveler for all products and services.
"The Free Market" is sham cooked up by a bunch of rich people to exploit others. Even the earliest advocates having actually seen in action what they promoted quickly wanted to undo it and their voices were marginalized because the machine was in motion and greed is what it is.
Contrary to common misconceptions, [Adam] Smith did not assert that all self-interested labour necessarily benefits society, or that all public goods are produced through self-interested labour. His proposal is merely that in a free market, people usually tend to produce goods desired by their neighbours. The tragedy of the commons is an example where self-interest tends to bring an unwanted result.
The "tragedy of the commons" is where the first real Capitalists helped to get laws passed to rob the people of the right to use the common lands, forcing them to become wage slaves for Capitalists. Now, where did we get the land in America for your "free market" to operate?
Capitalism always robs common people to benefit a few.
45 - Cindy D
Re #42
You mean like the collapse of the entire economic system like right now? Yeah, I agree that sure does make things hard--but not you and me Franco. My business is actually growing now. For the first time in years. It's pretty clear you couldn't possibly understand anything that didn't happen to you personally.
46 - Cindy D
correction, that is: but not [for] you and me Franco...
47 - Franco
#41 "Cindy D
I was a day trader for almost 2 years. My suspicion is that the price change had more to do with speculators*. Another problem with "The Free Market" by the way.
Day to day speculators and those who make their trade’s only ride on the back of the free market force of supply and demand, they can not control it. If you were consumed with trades on market movements and thought it was secualtors casing it all, you could not see the forest (free market) for the trees (speculators).
Your correct about speculators getting in the way of the free market only in the senses they can cause it to report a false value based on the volume of trades in either direction. But these infulances are only temporary and are forced to correct by the free market due to the real free market value, because they can not control the free market base price.
Free market values are a liveing thing. Put them in a box and you will distort its true value, and when it bust out again, and it always busts out, it will reak havic againts all the forces and reasons for trying to keep it boxed up. Then it will settle down again.
Additionally, no one is forced into making speculative trades. You’re free to choose. Choose wisely.
I always thought it was a religion with you people.
True to form, ad hominem, which is only a future admission to a lack of understanding in mans basic human interchange to bettering each others lives.
5) It is the most powerful constant ecconomic force existing between men, whether free [otherwise known as Capitalists] or enslaved [otherwise known as people who work for them].
Futher admission to a lack of understanding.
Slaves are those people in Zimbabwe right now being kept from the free market by a band of greedy exploiters for their own personal wealth and power over the people. This would be an extreemly bad place for forgine investment of the best kind, as it would be pilferd off and raided by the power elite. That government has to go for the sake of all those exploted people.
But even these exploited people, believer it or not, are only surviving because of a free underground market the government can fuck up if they can keep it hidden. It's not sufficient, but they world be dead by now otherwise. Lift that government off their backs and set them all free to buy, sell and trade and protect their full right to do that and watch them earn a substantially better living for a healty life.
This Capitalist/Slave mentality you have implanted in your mind over looks one important point. I will form it as a question.
Why is it that people who work for a US company (capitalist) can not start their own company and work for themselves doing something they like to do and or are good at? Show me the U.S. laws that say this is illegal. Show me the U.S. governmental departments that will work to hold that man down from freeing himself to form his own company?
48 - Cindy D
Franco,
The 60 Minutes video I posted is worth watching. You might even discover new information in there that might affect your opinion on the oil speculation.
"I always thought it was a religion with you people."
True to form, ad hominem...[attack].
Okay, how 'bout this: Every one I speak to about "The Free Market" stops the discussion as soon as they get to any hard questions. It appears they have a faith-based belief in it that defies evidence.
Why is it that people who work for a US company (capitalist) can not start their own company and work for themselves doing something they like to do and or are good at?
Can everyone do that? Can everyone have their own business in a Capitalist society? Can everyone even have a job in a Capitalist society?
Zimbabwe? Here you go see "Regions" for these countries:
"From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair."
William Blum
"[The ruling elites] know who their enemies are, and their enemies are the people, the people at home and the people abroad. Their enemies are anybody who wants more social justice, anybody who wants to use the surplus value of society for social needs rather than for individual class greed, that's their enemy."
Michael Parenti
49 - Cindy D
And one more thing Franco:
I like Ad Hominem attacks. Is that illegal? I thought I was free! Can't I be free to ignore rules?
I'm not using them as the basis for my points. My points are explained. They're sort of nice punctuation to me.
So quit bleating about them like your some kind of wuss.
50 - Cindy D
RE #22
Mark,
So, when your done with this one...
I might be done with this one.
...tell me why there should be a wage.
It's not necessary, to me. Unless a group of people decide it's necessary.
My cousin last night asked me why should anyone do any jobs that would jeopardize them. Jeopardize their life. I said, every community should be free to make their own choice. If you jeopardize your life maybe your community thinks you only have to work 3 months out of 12.
What do you think?
51 - Dave Nalle
Capitalism always robs common people to benefit a few.
Utter nonsense. In a free market capitalist system there are no common people and there are no 'few' and robbery is a moralistic judgement which has no place in the system at all. Capitalism is a system in which people work and advance on merit as determined by the natural forces of the market. Wages are determined based on skill and effort, profits are made based on productivity and quality of output. Workers are not exploited, they are employed to their highest capacity and competition for their skills assures that their wages are fair.
If a system which appears to be capitalist does not conform to this model then there is something structurally wrong with it, most likely resulting from inappropriate interference by the state.
Dave
52 - zingzing
dave: "Capitalism is a system in which people work and advance on merit as determined by the natural forces of the market. Wages are determined based on skill and effort, profits are made based on productivity and quality of output. Workers are not exploited, they are employed to their highest capacity and competition for their skills assures that their wages are fair."
ah, the dream.
"If a system which appears to be capitalist does not conform to this model then there is something structurally wrong with it, most likely resulting from inappropriate interference by the state."
forgetting about greed there, ain't you?
come on dave... you can't be so naive. that's NOT how capitalism really works, and it's NOT just because of the government, it's because of human nature. the system you describe is a ridiculous fantasy that millions of people would scoff at if you tried to present it as reality.
53 - Dave Nalle
Zing, in a free market capitalist system greed should counteract greed. The success of one business should lead to competitors trying to imitate them, thereby limiting their success. The greed of business owners is countered by the greed of workers who will organize to resist exploitation if it develops.
I admit that there IS a role for government in this. You need courts so that people can sue if their rights are abused, and you need some basic safety and individual rights regulation to prevent unfair trade practices, cartels and other abuses. What you don't want from government is favoritism and selective regulation and enforcement.
Dave
54 - Cindy D
Dave,
In a free market capitalist system there are no common people...
Of course not, you have to steal the common land so the Capitalists can use it. What "common" people are left after that? Dave, how many times have you told me that we need dictators to make a free society?
Don't put gloss on it Dave. You agreed DICTATORS needed to be installed where people were already trying to install Democracies.
Dave haven't you ever read Charles Dickens? What the hell do you think he was writing about?
55 - zingzing
yes, dave, but the "corporation," whatever that really is, crushes the individual worker as often as not. most workers can't afford to take on their employers.
basically, once you get a bunch of people together with a common (or at least similar) goal, their collective intelligence dwindles and they also forget about other individuals, especially when their collective endeavors seem to be (at least for the moment) benefitting themselves.
worthy people get left behind in the muck, not because they lacked in drive or merit, but because they became food for the machine. you hear countless stories of this sort. look at what happened in LA the other day.
and people are exploited by the capitalist system every day. this is why we have sweatshops and slavery. capitalism may benefit many, many people, maybe even a majority of people. but it also destroys that which it finds unnecessary.
maybe you have benefitted nicely from it, and maybe i have to, but to forget that one day very soon you could be on the dirty, shit and bloodstained side of that wheel is very dangerous, and very stupid.
56 - Cindy D
...in a free market capitalist system greed should counteract greed. The success of one business should lead to competitors trying to imitate them, thereby limiting their success. The greed of business owners is countered by the greed of workers who will organize to resist exploitation if it develops.
You know what they said in my step-dad's AA meetings? Shoulda, woulda, coulda...
We don't have the ...success of one business should lead to competitors trying to imitate them, thereby limiting their success...
Instead we have monopolies.
We don't have...The greed of business owners is countered by the greed of workers who will organize to resist exploitation if it develops.
Instead we have some people who can't even afford an apartment if they put in 60 hours a week. Let alone support a family. And they certainly can't afford healthcare.
Dave, why the hell do you think the middle class woke up at all? It's not working anymore. Why the fuck would people who are designed to be asleep wake up and start complaining if they were content?
57 - Franco
#43 -- Cindy D
Are children in sweatshops free to say no?
I do not condone sweatshops, forced labor, explotation or discriminaition, but the people running those countries do, for their own perceived reasons for control and greed, they are the ones you have your argument with.
Consider some reality these people really face.
Back in 1992 when I was working in Taiwan/China, I knew families who had members in China needing work and the line of people that went half way around the Niki factory their was for people needing work at that factory because 33 cents an hour was better then anything their ecconomy could offer them anywhere else.
It would take weeks to get to the front of the line. Whole family's members would take shifts waiting in line for 24 hours a day just to get one famly member a job. When you got close to the front of the line, local thug extortionists would tell you that if you got work, you had to pay them 10% of it. They paid it.
The govermnet skims Niki too. It is a rat invefted hand out, kick back snakes game, all at the expence of the workers. Why is the goverment in the shake down of its own citizens. In their minds they think you can not allow free market so they can't let the people make all that much more then the standare going pay wages or you throw the hole ecconomy into turmorl, as they see it in thier samll communist minds.
So these workers wait for weeks in line to make 33 cents an hour to make American sports celebrity tennis shoes that sold in the US for well over $100 dollars. Ya, I think it's sick too, on both ends.
Yes, that's heart-rending disparity. But if the governments of those sweatshops where they're to protect the rights of life, liberty, prosperity and the pursuit of happiness for the people, the goverments wouldn't be skimming Niki, and the people would find it, and Niki would be paying better wadges.
As far as the kids in the US who have to have the ego trip of sports celebrty shose, that is the parents call, and your argument is with them.
Take Japan after WWII, they did not have a pot to piss in and the world around them hated them. The stuff they started making was pure carp as I clearly remember it coming in back in the 50's.
I used to go to the auto parts store with my old man and you could buy a decal back then for the window of your car that said "Genuine Japanese Parts" to get a laugh as their quality was a big joke.
The assistant principle of my junior high school bought the first model Toyota that came into the US in the early 60's (cheap) and it was pretty much a piece of crap.
No body's laughing anymore, and have not for more then 35 years and they have done it all based on the free market. They make high tech everything now. Precisian and excellence at the world's pinnacle and they set many of those standards. This tiny Island of Japan, while being hated by most of the world around them at the time, has risen to become the world's second largest economy and their quality rivals the Germans.
China is on that rise now, and yet still, freedom of the people is still stiffeled by the government and there the biggest enviornmental poluters of all time and that shows no sign of changing any time soon.
Now I am not suggesting that other developing nations will find the plato of Japan, I can not say, but being free to try and having that freedom protected will get most countries half way there and would make all the difference in the world on a better life for most of those people.
"Life, faculties, production -- in other words, individuality, liberty, property -- this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." -- from The Law
"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?" -- from The Law
"-- whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government -- at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty." -- from The Law
58 - Cindy D
Franco,
You know what? You need to go back to the drawing board. So much of what you say is fantasy that you are simply not credible.
I do not condone sweatshops, forced labor, explotation or discriminaition, but the people running those countries do, for their own perceived reasons for control and greed, they are the ones you have your argument with.
Good for you. Because the Chicago School does support them. The case has been made. You aren't even up on the dogma of your own belief system.
Why don't you take a lesson from Dave? At least I can respect Dave as believing in individual freedom in a system that he knows does not exist but he believes could.
You are living in a wonderland of propaganda and unreality. Talk about surreal!
59 - Cindy D
I know, I know "Ad Hominem attack", he cries as he goes bleating off with the herd...
60 - Cindy D
Try thinking of those people like they were your mother or your daughter or your son. And ask yourself if you would want the circumstances you accept for those people to be inflicted on your people.
Ever. Under any circumstances.
And if your people were somehow subjected to such conditions. Would you want someone to speak for them? Would you change anything to stop the pain of people you personally gave a shit about?
You might get a bit farther in your personal development thinking along those lines.
And then ask yourself if you would be so critical of me. If I were speaking for people you loved.
61 - Cindy D
"We're not permanent. We're temporary."
62 - Ma(rk Ede)n
Cindy, imo your approach indicated in #50 (communities organized to make decisions about such things as compensation) is what we need to develop. As for life threatening jobs -- think robots. All this automation has to be useful for something other than making money for owners.
63 - Cindy D
Mark,
What about money?
64 - Dave Nalle
Don't put gloss on it Dave. You agreed DICTATORS needed to be installed where people were already trying to install Democracies.
In a society which is still largely tribal or post-colonial if you install direct democracy you end up with tyranny anyway, so you're better off going through a phase of benevolent dictatorship as the society matures and develops capitalism and an education system which will make it capable of practicing democracy responsibly.
Dave haven't you ever read Charles Dickens? What the hell do you think he was writing about?
You actually want to hold up early industrial age Britain as an example of a pure free market capitalist society? Seriously?
Dave
65 - Ma(rk Ede)n
Cindy, I think that we will come up with some method of tracking socially necessary labor time that people give to their communities.
66 - Dave Nalle
Instead we have monopolies.
We do? Where? And if we do have monopolies on a large scale engaging in unfair trade practices then stopping those activities is a legitimate role of government.
We don't have...The greed of business owners is countered by the greed of workers who will organize to resist exploitation if it develops.
Instead we have some people who can't even afford an apartment if they put in 60 hours a week. Let alone support a family. And they certainly can't afford healthcare.
Bullshit. The HHS says that one third of income should go to housing. Name one part of the country where a person working 60 hours a week (minimum of $2200 a month) cannot find an apartment to rent for $700 within a reasonable commuting distance. What's more, someone living at a low wage ought to be sharing living space, which should bring housing expenses down well under $500 a month, leaving more than enough money for a car, auto insurance, food and health insurance. I've done it, Cindy and I know many others who have as well. In fact, I know a single income family living on about $50K a year with two kids and they have two cars, health insurance and a decent rental house in a decent neighborhood.
Dave, why the hell do you think the middle class woke up at all? It's not working anymore. Why the fuck would people who are designed to be asleep wake up and start complaining if they were content?
People are by nature discontent. If they aren't happy with their lot right now, then they should change it. The system still allows for it. That's why the US is 70% small and entrepreneurial businesses, which is definitive proof that despite some aberations, for most people capitalism IS working here.
Dave
67 - Cindy D
Dave,
Did you tell your daughter she's not allowed to watch TMBG anymore yet?
They are un-indoctrinating her.
68 - Ma(rk Ede)n
Note to aspiring entrepreneurs -- you can get your chiclets from Cadbury Adams.
69 - Roger Nowosielski
Dave (#66),
Your stronger argument would be: they've accepted bourgeois values.
70 - Cindy D
Dave,
It's sort of tricky when you define terms based on a scale that is huge. People aren't 100 feet tall.
A defacto monopoly is when WalMart (etc, etc...put any megacorp here) comes to town and no local business can compete. So in the local community you have a defacto monopoly. That is how I see it (for now). Because that is what actually affects real businesses.
71 - Christopher Rose
Is it normal for people in the USA to work 60 hours per week, as in Dave's extraordinary (to we Europeans) example in #66 above?
72 - Baronius
Cindy, I've never seen a Walmart that didn't have a Target or a Costco within a mile nearby. Also, where does the Chicago School endorse exploitation? They don't. Maybe things that you consider exploitation, but not exploitation. By your standards, a child purchasing a 25 cent gumball somehow involves exploitation.
What would I do if one of my children were among the people waiting in line for a job at a Nike factory? I'd do what the other parents do: take a shift in line for him, and thank God that some money from the great American economy has drifted down to our mud hut village.
73 - MarkSaleski
Name one part of the country where a person working 60 hours a week (minimum of $2200 a month) cannot find an apartment to rent for $700 within a reasonable commuting distance.
metro boston and it's suburbs, both in terms of cost and commuting distance.
74 - Dr Dreadful
I work 40 hours a week.
There was at my workplace, up until a few months ago, the possibility of working up to 63 hours including overtime. Then we got a new boss who decided that a happy and motivated workforce was one that got to spend time with its families, and that if we as an agency couldn't get done what needed to be done during regular business hours then we weren't doing our job properly.
And you know what? She's right.
75 - Dr Dreadful
Dave, try finding a box under a freeway in San Francisco or San Diego that you can rent for $700.