So you fucking think fry cooks don't deserve a higher minimum wage?

[The Johnny]

Ok, the US department of labor says that the studies they've reviewed indicate that increases to the minimum wage are not correlated with layoffs, so I was wrong about that. It also says that raising it is not in general bad for the economy. The idea that it may speed up inflation however is conspicuously absent from their list of common myths about the minimum wage

There's a billion excuses to lay off people, one of them has been the machinization of production, which isnt necesarrily a matter of cost-efficiency most of the time, but rather to break the power of unions and make factory workers/employeees a malleable mass that can be subdued.

How many cases are there where a working hand is replaced with a bot that requires a huge investment and it also requires specialized maintenance by a specially trained engineer that ends up costing more than the original working hand?

But im sure you are pre-rich, so does it even matter?

Wait, are you saying that raising the minimum wage will or won't lead to layoffs?

Also, mechanization is necessary for the eventual advent of a post-scarcity society. People get screwed over by it now, but that's because society hasn't caught up with the technology and the technology isn't yet quite to where it needs to be. It hurts people now, but in a rather short time on a historical timescale (still rather long subjectively though, as compared to a human lifespan, I'll admit) things will be better than they ever were. Eventually it will seem absurd to expect people to work because there will quite visibly be only a tiny handful of things that need doing. Change should hopefully cascade upwards once there's nobody left for managers to manage.

Also regardless of which side is winning the conflict between capitalists/management and workers/proletariat has the primary effect of screwing over the consumer. A plague on both their houses.

You are missing the entire point of my argument and reframing the discussion at your convenience with that question - the answer being "sometimes", employers and owners are such assholes that they would rather mechanize production at a higher expense to themselves than to pay decent wages and rates to employees regardless of cost-efficiency. Mechanize until your employees will work for crumbs, if they start organizing and complaining, repeat step 1.

Sure, change and technology should cascade upwards someday just like trickle-down economics work, right? RIGHT? OH WAIT.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't think that condemning an entire field of study just because it produces many flawed theories is very productive, either. Economics is sort of a conglomeration of anthropology, psychology, history, and statistics, and the systems they're trying to work with are dynamic, complex, and incompletely understood. They aren't CREATING the systems, though; they're DESCRIBING the systems. Sometimes very badly. But still, getting rid of economists because they aren't very good at understanding economic systems is a bit like getting rid of psychologists in the 1930's because they weren't very good at understanding psychology; it wouldn't have made human psychology go away, it would have just impeded the accumulation of knowledge about it.

Economists lack the feedback required to make it a form of science.
They project and project but they never review.
They never even try to estimate the accuracy of their past projections.
And then, having bolstered their ego by ignoring reality, they project some more.
I stand by my point. Fuck 'em all with pointy sticks.

That seems... sweeping, shallow, and inaccurate. I don't have a tremendous amount of respect for the field of economics, particularly pop economics, but as an academic field it is still developing.

Can you cite some sources for those statements? If not, I'm going to just assume you're going through one of your all-hyperbole phases again and are (hopefully) temporarily incapable of contributing meaningfully to conversations.

He mad, sis.

I'd only like to offer the distinction between the more vocally wrong economists, which are the ones that are paid or lobbied to hold such opinions, like most if not all of the think-tank assholes, and the good economists no one has heard of because the powers that be arent interested in promoting them.

Yeah, I think he may be assuming that all economists fall into the former camp, and is unaware of the realm of academic economists who are chugging along trying to improve their social science methodology, and being completely ignored by the media and the public because the work they do is pretty much the opposite of glamorous. Or interesting, at least for most people.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't think that condemning an entire field of study just because it produces many flawed theories is very productive, either. Economics is sort of a conglomeration of anthropology, psychology, history, and statistics, and the systems they're trying to work with are dynamic, complex, and incompletely understood. They aren't CREATING the systems, though; they're DESCRIBING the systems. Sometimes very badly. But still, getting rid of economists because they aren't very good at understanding economic systems is a bit like getting rid of psychologists in the 1930's because they weren't very good at understanding psychology; it wouldn't have made human psychology go away, it would have just impeded the accumulation of knowledge about it.

Economists lack the feedback required to make it a form of science.
They project and project but they never review.
They never even try to estimate the accuracy of their past projections.
And then, having bolstered their ego by ignoring reality, they project some more.
I stand by my point. Fuck 'em all with pointy sticks.

That seems... sweeping, shallow, and inaccurate. I don't have a tremendous amount of respect for the field of economics, particularly pop economics, but as an academic field it is still developing.

Can you cite some sources for those statements? If not, I'm going to just assume you're going through one of your all-hyperbole phases again and are (hopefully) temporarily incapable of contributing meaningfully to conversations.

I'm reading up on economics just to prove you wrong.
As you can see, my initial statements lack foundation.
It is very likely that it is  one of my all-hyperbole phases (i like that phrase btw), but i will not rest until i have read more economics or have gotten distracted by something.
Well, except for now. now is bed time.

PS Your assumption would be well grounded, if I start making sense you will probably notice.

Other than that, I still think Carthage needs to be burned to the ground Economics sucks.

I will be interested in learning the results of your expedition into the realm of economics. I always wanted to take some econ classes but it just didn't work out that way. I did take neuroeconomics, which was interesting (if horrifically flawed).

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ok, the US department of labor says that the studies they've reviewed indicate that increases to the minimum wage are not correlated with layoffs, so I was wrong about that. It also says that raising it is not in general bad for the economy. The idea that it may speed up inflation however is conspicuously absent from their list of common myths about the minimum wage

There's a billion excuses to lay off people, one of them has been the machinization of production, which isnt necesarrily a matter of cost-efficiency most of the time, but rather to break the power of unions and make factory workers/employeees a malleable mass that can be subdued.

How many cases are there where a working hand is replaced with a bot that requires a huge investment and it also requires specialized maintenance by a specially trained engineer that ends up costing more than the original working hand?

But im sure you are pre-rich, so does it even matter?

Wait, are you saying that raising the minimum wage will or won't lead to layoffs?

Also, mechanization is necessary for the eventual advent of a post-scarcity society. People get screwed over by it now, but that's because society hasn't caught up with the technology and the technology isn't yet quite to where it needs to be. It hurts people now, but in a rather short time on a historical timescale (still rather long subjectively though, as compared to a human lifespan, I'll admit) things will be better than they ever were. Eventually it will seem absurd to expect people to work because there will quite visibly be only a tiny handful of things that need doing. Change should hopefully cascade upwards once there's nobody left for managers to manage.

Also regardless of which side is winning the conflict between capitalists/management and workers/proletariat has the primary effect of screwing over the consumer. A plague on both their houses.

Who is the consumer, then? You speak of them as if they are some third party to the management/labor conflict.

[LMNO]

This may seem shallow, but you should read Krugman's blog. He creates models and makes predictions based on those models, and then revises those models based upon how accurate those predictions are.


He also talks a lot about economists who elevate politics over theory.

[Doktor Howl]

I don't believe any economists, because their field is where psychology was in the 1970s.  Some of them may be using proper methodology, but you can't see them because the rest of them are jabbering shit about the laffer curve or whatnot, and doing Aristotle-style logical gymnastics to prove that what SHOULD word DOES work, even though it never works at all.

Sooner or later, they'll get their shit together, the way psychology has gotten its shit together (or has at least drastically improved).  On that day, I will listen.

As for right now, I put them in the same bucket as philosophers.

[Doktor Howl]

THAT BEING SAID:

The reality is that previous rises in the minimum wage have not resulted in inflation.  That isn't theory, it's historical, measurable, and verifiable fact.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't believe any economists, because their field is where psychology was in the 1970s.  Some of them may be using proper methodology, but you can't see them because the rest of them are jabbering shit about the laffer curve or whatnot, and doing Aristotle-style logical gymnastics to prove that what SHOULD word DOES work, even though it never works at all.

Sooner or later, they'll get their shit together, the way psychology has gotten its shit together (or has at least drastically improved).  On that day, I will listen.

As for right now, I put them in the same bucket as philosophers.

The ones that do good science aren't  the ones you hear from, because they aren't the ones who tell people with money what they want to hear.

That's my hypothesis, anyway.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

THAT BEING SAID:

The reality is that previous rises in the minimum wage have not resulted in inflation.  That isn't theory, it's historical, measurable, and verifiable fact.

Yup.

[Doktor Howl]

The ones that do good science aren't  the ones you hear from, because they aren't the ones who tell people with money what they want to hear.

That's my hypothesis, anyway.

I'm unsure how you could make a proper science out of it, on account of the fact that finance is always riddled with people gaming the system.  You can't game physics or chemistry¹, because it either IS or it ISN'T, unless you're talking about that fucking cat. 

I think economics as an approach is barking up the wrong tree.  To understand economics, you have to understand humans, and that means psychology and neuroscience.  Economics isn't a "natural" force as far as I can tell.  It seems to be a behavior.



¹ Does not apply in Tucson or downtown Portland.

[Demolition Squid]

Pickety's 'Capital in the 21st Century' is a good example of economics as social science in my opinion.

He draws purely on historical evidence and statistics, and explains his reasoning every step of the way. It IS a political book, because it is a book not a paper and he makes it explicit at the start that he is against inequality and the whole book is an analysis of inequality as it has existed through the ages and what conditions have led to less of it.

It also points out that the system is rigged and provides some practical steps as to how this could be addressed based on the statistical evidence - but as the way to address it can be summarized as 'tax people based on their assets not their earnings' that will never happen.

ETA - In case it wasn't clear, I mean it is a political book in the sense that rather than just saying 'this is what it is' he also makes an argument in a lot of cases that inequality is morally wrong and therefore steps should be taken to reduce it - and he makes the argument in emotional rather than scientific terms. You wouldn't see that in a harder science - like a psychiatric textbook - but then, I don't know if psychiatrists ever had to make the case that disorders are undesirable and should be cured where possible, which seems like the obvious comparison here.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

THAT BEING SAID:

The reality is that previous rises in the minimum wage have not resulted in inflation.  That isn't theory, it's historical, measurable, and verifiable fact.

If previous rises in the minimum wage didn't affect inflation then I agree that another raise in the minimum wage will not affect it either.

Do you have a source for this?

[Reginald Ret]

Starting a thread for my exploration of economics in Techmology and Scientism.

I will post there every once in a while but not much now since i should be working.

[Rev Thwack]

THAT BEING SAID:

The reality is that previous rises in the minimum wage have not resulted in inflation.  That isn't theory, it's historical, measurable, and verifiable fact.

If previous rises in the minimum wage didn't affect inflation then I agree that another raise in the minimum wage will not affect it either.

Do you have a source for this?

Tell me if you can find a correlation, then we'll look at causation.


Minimum wage changes - http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/coverage.htm


Inflation changes - http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Pickety's 'Capital in the 21st Century' is a good example of economics as social science in my opinion.

He draws purely on historical evidence and statistics, and explains his reasoning every step of the way. It IS a political book, because it is a book not a paper and he makes it explicit at the start that he is against inequality and the whole book is an analysis of inequality as it has existed through the ages and what conditions have led to less of it.

It also points out that the system is rigged and provides some practical steps as to how this could be addressed based on the statistical evidence - but as the way to address it can be summarized as 'tax people based on their assets not their earnings' that will never happen.

ETA - In case it wasn't clear, I mean it is a political book in the sense that rather than just saying 'this is what it is' he also makes an argument in a lot of cases that inequality is morally wrong and therefore steps should be taken to reduce it - and he makes the argument in emotional rather than scientific terms. You wouldn't see that in a harder science - like a psychiatric textbook - but then, I don't know if psychiatrists ever had to make the case that disorders are undesirable and should be cured where possible, which seems like the obvious comparison here.

I think you mean psychology textbook, because psychiatry is the psychological specialty in medicine.

Psychology is a social or "soft" science, like economics.

You do see arguments like that in psychology. Not generally in textbooks, but I also don't think that the book you're talking about is a textbook.