Anyways… yes, I would love to live in this perfect world but then I have to ask myself, how much am I willing to give up to live in that world? And more importantly, would the majority of people really be better off in that world?

Currently we have the absolute best healthcare in the world. The quality of our doctors and the access to life saving medications are second to none. Why is that? Money. Money makes all of that possible. Doctors, as they should, make crap tons of money. Granted, much of that goes to malpractice insurance, but how often do you see a doctor driving an old beat up Honda? My point is, these high salaries attract the brightest and most competent people to the profession. That means that when you go to the doctor, chances are really good you’re getting someone better than Joe Average that barely passed “Turn Your Head and Cough 101.” As for the medicine and procedures, big corporations invest billions of dollars into research to find those magic pills that prevent or ward off diseases. The investment is worth it because when they find that magic pill, they know they’ll recoup all their costs.

Under socialized medicine, you lose the money. Doctors will be given a menu by Uncle Sam that dictates how much they are allowed to charge for exams and procedures. To keep the cost of the program in check (and not rape the taxpayers too much), these prices will more than likely be far less than what doctors charge now. That’s less money in the doctor’s bank account. Over time, these highly intelligent people will start looking for other ways their intelligence can bring home the bacon. As the qualified doctors leave the field, they’ll be replaced with a new class of Joe Average. The quality of care will go downhill dramatically. The same thing with medications. Uncle Sam will tell pharmaceutical companies that he’s only paying $x for all pills therefore the incentive for these companies to invest fortunes into research disappears.

I firmly feel that under socialized healthcare, we would go from the Gods of Medicine to mere midgets pedaling shit filled caplets in the back alley.

Plus, show me a country where socialized healthcare has worked. In Canadia, the waiting lists and quality of care has gotten so bad that the wealthy started paying doctors under the table for their care. This got so bad they actually instituted a law that made this a crime.

Sure, socialized healthcare may be great for the millions that have nothing right now, but it kills the quality of care for the hundreds of millions that pay for their healthcare today.

From the conservative talking points: “Even after the Card and Krueger study was fully discredited by economic science, it is still being used by proponents of higher minimum wages to support an increase.”

Notice there’s no footnote after this statement? That’s because he is talking out of his ass. “Fully discredited by economic science”…and then you see what “economic science REALLY said about it:

“The belief that raising the minimum wage causes job loss was more commonly accepted by economists decades ago, but high-quality research by leading academic economists has forced the economic community to re-evaluate these arguments. This consensus view rapidly eroded following evidence from the 1990s. Even Benjamin Bernanke, President Bush’s appointee as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has noted that “economists disagree about …whether increases in the minimum wage reduce employment of low-wage workers”(Bernanke 2006).”

But what about thoughtful people who just happen to think that some of these measures may not actually help the people they were intended to help? You know, since by removing the lowest rung on the economic ladder, raising the minimum wage may have destroyed 60,000 to 100,000 jobs back in the 90s? Party politics dictate that even if you actually had research saying that minimum wage hurts the poor…

Bullocks

Fallacy: Raising the minimum wage hurts the poor: This logic is wrongfully based upon the notion of supply and demand in that if you raise the price of something demand will go down. This is true. However, it is totally wrong to apply this to labor. “Demand for labour” isn’t really demand because in general people don’t consume labour. The amount of labour employed is determined by a production function, not a demand function.

Go to the bureau of labor statistics and look up facts and data; don’t link the word “research” and point it to a right-wing republican talking points peice. Business owners and conservatives try to convince you that keeping wages low really helps young black americans for instance. They are not fighting for the young black american, they are fighting for business owners who will see their bottom line increase and their profits won’t be as high. An increase in minimum wage does not reduce the demand of their product and thus they cannot reduce their number of employees without having negative effects on production and meeting those demands. If you do a little research (I mean apart from quoting talking point from people who have business and corporations interests at heart) it’s pretty easy to see. Those old models they still use today to convince people they are better off earning less, have long since been disproven.

The best recent research has shown that the job loss reported in earlier analyses does not, in fact, occur when the minimum wage is increased. There is little question that the overall impact of a minimum wage is positive, as the following facts make clear:

If the minimum wage were increased nationally to $7.25:
14.9 million workers would receive a raise,
80% of those affected are adults age 20 or over, and
7.3 million children would see their parents income rise.
Families with affected workers rely on those workers for over half of their earnings.
46% of all families with affected workers rely solely on the earnings from those workers.
Some minimum wage workers remain in low-wage jobs for substantial periods.
The best recent research on the economic impact of the minimum wage shows positive effects without job loss.
Even the research that suggests a negative labor market effect shows only a minimal impact that is more than offset by the higher wage levels.
The states that have adopted higher-than-federal minimum wages have seen low-wage workers’ incomes rise with no negative side-effects.
Over 650 economists, including five Nobel Prize winners and six past presidents of the American Economics Association, recently signed a statement stating that federal and state minimum wage increases “can significantly improve the lives of low-income workers and their families, without the adverse effects that critics have claimed” (EPI 2006).

For most of the 1970s and 1980s, the literature exploring the link between minimum wages and employment largely consisted of time-series analyses that suggested statistically significant negative employment effects resulting from minimum wage increases (given their small magnitude, discussed below, the economic significance of these early findings is subject to debate). These findings served to confirm the simple competitive model of the labor market.

Such a model inherently assumes that employers have perfect information about all employees and prospective hires, and hiring and firing is entirely without cost. Similarly, job-seekers have perfect information about all prospective employers, and there are no costs associated with job loss and unemployment. The model further assumes that workers and employers have essentially unlimited access to other employment and hiring options. All of these assumptions lead to a labor market in which firms can hire as many workers as they please at a given market rate (over which they have no sway or control). According to such a model, if employers lower wages by one cent, then all workers will instantly quit. By this same logic, employers receive no benefit from paying a wage higher than the barest minimum necessary to hire workers. In this idealized world, a binding minimum wage (that is, a minimum wage higher than the equilibrium market-clearing wage) will necessarily lead to a decrease in employment.

This model is based on the assumption that low-wage workers can withhold their labor if they are not paid a sufficient amount. This is clearly a flawed vision of the labor market, especially for adults working in the low-wage labor market (the majority of those affected by a minimum wage increase).

In 1991, Alison Wellington extended the previous time-series estimates to include data from the 1980s. Over that decade, the real value of the minimum wage declined significantly, providing a chance to test the effect of decreases in the minimum wage. Wellington found statistically significant negative employment effects associated with higher minimum wages, but her estimate of an elasticity of -0.06—meaning that teenage employment declined less than 1% when the minimum wage increased 10%—was smaller than the lowest previous estimates (Wellington 2001). Wellington also found no statistically significant effect on young adults. Teenagers are often studied in the minimum wage literature because a high percentage of teenagers are low-wage workers. (Note, however, that teenagers compose only a small percentage of those most affected by minimum wage increases.)

In 1992, David Card of Princeton University published a study breaking with the time-series tradition….Card found that the minimum wage had a positive effect on wages, but no significant employment effects one way or the other.

Also in 1992, Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Alan Kreuger of Princeton University published a study using longitudinal data on fast-food establishments, tracking employment effects at the firm level after the 1991 increase in the minimum wage….This study found a statistically significant positive employment effect (Katz and Krueger 1992). That is, employment increased more in firms for whom the minimum wage change was binding than for other firms.

Perhaps the most famous recent minimum wage study examined the employment effect of raising New Jersey’s minimum wage. This study by Card and Krueger was groundbreaking because it examined firm-level data using a natural experiment methodology that examined the responses of firms on both sides of the New Jersey-Pennsylvania state border before and after the imposition of New Jersey’s 1992 minimum wage increase. Card and Krueger focused their analysis on fast-food restaurants, as these would be the most heavily affected by the increase. By conducting a phone survey of a sample of over 400 fast-food restaurants, the researchers were able to conclude that the increase in the New Jersey minimum wage did not lead to any measurable negative effect on employment. Card and Krueger’s results actually point to a slight positive effect on fast-food employment (Card and Krueger 1994).

source

But what about thoughtful people who just happen to think that some of these measures may not actually help the people they were intended to help? You know, since by removing the lowest rung on the economic ladder, raising the minimum wage may have destroyed 60,000 to 100,000 jobs back in the 90s? Party politics dictate that even if you actually had research saying that minimum wage hurts the poor, you would still probably prefer a candidate who supported it because just the idea makes you feel good. Just because someone has at least a high-school economics education that they rely on in deciding whith policies to support–instead of what makes them feel all bright and sunny inside–doesn’t mean that they’re some dark-hearted Scrooge.

Don’t you find it interesting that CEO’s salaries are in the millions, yet we don’t have the money to increase minimum wage? I am inclined to think that those two are somehow related. One of those reasons that increasing minimum wage looses jobs, is because the rich don’t want to get any poorer, so to keep their salary high, cut the employees, and make it work. You have to agree that this is at least part of that problem, and deserves just as much focus.

AND, to clarify, I didn’t say that everyone that found those principles somewhat questionable was a greedy, heartless asshole, and that everyone that went by them was a saint; I know that there are people like Bill Gates out there that do great things, but the main point about that is, HE IS A MINORITY. If more people in similar situations as his position (not necessarily on the top billionaires list) did half of what he did, a lot of these problems that fall on the government to take care of probably wouldn’t even be an issue.

What I see is a huge disparity between the elite wealthy, and the poor, and the margin only grows; it never stops growing. While the poor people are left to fend for themselves, as the rich get richer, I do think that the government should be helping; after all, they are definitely helping the rich get richer, and making it harder and harder to live a decent life in this country. You don’t have to agree with everything I believe (such as my previous comment), that’s fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of the points I made here in this, that lead me to many of those beliefs, are totally true.

[...]and do so without any concern, regret, or feeling for those that may need help or those that they have been born higher than, with more privilege than, or they stepped on to get to where they are; EVEN if they can help them with little or no monetary effort on their part!

Well, you got that right. It doesn’t take ANY money on your own part to create a welfare state. That’s the whole point, right? You just have to decide to give other people’s money away, and that’s the easiest kind of giving!

Again, I think your rhetoric reminds me of a lot of politicians. Are you against raising the minimum wage, socialized medicine, and higher taxes? YOU MUST NOT CARE ABOUT PEOPLE, YOU INSENSITIVE SHIT!

It’s incredibly evasive and easy to dismiss people that way, but you’re just yelling loud enough to ignore the fact that maybe, just maybe, people who don’t necessarily support all of your bullet points in lock step may still care about other people. YOU paint us as uncaring, unthinking greed-bots because it makes YOU feel better for supporting these causes.

But what about thoughtful people who just happen to think that some of these measures may not actually help the people they were intended to help? You know, since by removing the lowest rung on the economic ladder, raising the minimum wage may have destroyed 60,000 to 100,000 jobs back in the 90s? Party politics dictate that even if you actually had research saying that minimum wage hurts the poor, you would still probably prefer a candidate who supported it because just the idea makes you feel good. Just because someone has at least a high-school economics education that they rely on in deciding whith policies to support–instead of what makes them feel all bright and sunny inside–doesn’t mean that they’re some dark-hearted Scrooge. There are similar arguments against socialized medicine that I’m happy to discuss if you’d like.

Or what about those who think that this isn’t a proper function of government, but are happy to help people in other ways besides government seizure? People like Bill Gates argue against higher taxes because they hurt his business, and by extension, his employees and customers. But he’s one of the most giving philanthropists in history, right? *GASP* There are other ways to help people besides government?

You paint everyone against these items with this huge brush that the Democratic party has handed you saying that anybody that disagrees with these specific initiatives is inconsiderate and naïve. That’s a pretty narrow-minded view, considering the reasons people might not support them OTHER than greed. It’s really funny how “greedy” has come to be defined as “unwilling to pay for things out of other people’s pockets”.

1. Socialized Medicine
2. Raised Minimum Wage
3. Higher Taxes
4. Amnesty for illegal immigrants
5. Formation of a welfare state

EVERYTHING that you listed is a good thing for people that need it. Those people are a part of our society, and I do believe that to function as a society, some people need some assistance, more so than others. To be concerned that we would have to all do our part and chip in to make sure that everyone in our society is taken care of is one of the scariest revelations you have ever expressed to me; because it shows that you not only completely take for granted the benefits you have because of who you are, and where you were born, but it also highlights that you don’t understand, nor care about anyone that would be considered beneath you economically. That is both inconsiderate and naive.

With that being said, it also highlights why I would never be a Libertarian or a Republican; they tend to put their needs so far above anyone else’s (which, it is perfectly fine to tend to your own needs, so don’t even insinuate that the opposite is what I am saying), and do so without any concern, regret, or feeling for those that may need help or those that they have been born higher than, with more privilege than, or they stepped on to get to where they are; EVEN if they can help them with little or no monetary effort on their part! Having those beliefs is just not human in my opinion. People that believe this shouldn’t be afforded the benefits of living in the society they seek so desperately to leave the ones poorer than them out in the cold. If you believe those things, truly, perhaps you should move to a country where they don’t take care of their poor, and everyone is on truly equal footing… you may find that you don’t like your station in life as much as you do in America.

I personally see all of the things on this list as things that help people that didn’t necessarily grow up with the same privileges as the rest of us, and I see focusing on them as an opportunity to be more humanitarian, and less greedy. I also see it as something that a society was designed to do, and in essence, why our country was even founded in the first place.

Unfortunately, as you illustrate with these beliefs, the people that tend to have the most wealth (the amount you make, whatever it is, is in the top 99% percentile of the world’s wealth, think about that), are more likely to have started on a higher step in life, and when they state the plight of people beneath them is both none of their concern, nor their problem, that is just inhumane and deplorable. I challenge you to think about that, because you never know when you may find yourself in someone else’s shoes.

I seem to recall that “Big-L” Libertarians generally vote, well, Libertarian.

Yes, you’re right. What I meant to say was that when Libertarians don’t vote Libertarian (for instance, a tight or close election), they tend to vote Republican.

Anyway, I think equating a Libertarian/Independent vote with no vote at all is pretty unfair. The former is a vote for one’s principles, while the latter is indicative of procrastination or apathy (even if it’s veiled as something else.)

I don’t know about the Independents or other 3rd parties, but Libertarians (the largest 3rd party) tend to always vote Republican.

I seem to recall that “Big-L” Libertarians generally vote, well, Libertarian. But yes, Duane, you may have been slightly mistaken there. The general buzz around “little-l” libertarians is that traditionally, they’ll vote Republican before they’ll vote Democrat. In fact, I’ve heard them called “Republicans who want to smoke pot”. Now, the Republicans in power at the moment retain very few of the characteristics that I believe may have attracted some Libs in the first place, so I can’t imagine it’s as prevalent as it used to be.