JayB

I will add that one to the hit list on Amazon.

This was an excellent program and really puts the subject in persepective. But, no. On second though. It's better to do nothing. It's also worth asking why Africa - unlike Asia - is so collossally fucked that they can't even begin to implement rudimentary public health measures, much less make enough money to afford mosquito nets, much less medications, despite massive and sustained infusions of aid for the past 40-plus years. This relates directly to the question of whether it was aid, or something else, that has enabled China, Singapore, Korea, Indonesia, etc to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the same period of time. This also relates directly to the question of whether societies that organize their economies in such a way as to optimize wealth creation - as opposed to wealth distribution - lead to higher absolute incomes and lower levels of absolute poverty over time, which takes us back to the credibility of the original study that asserted the poorest citizens in the US were just marginally better off than the poorest citizens in Russia and Mexico. Was there actually a point to this study other than to inject a bit more socioligical embalming fluid into Socialism's carcass so that the faithful will be inspired to continue the ongoing experiment against reality? I'm reading Schumpeter's "Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy," now, and one of the central arguments in the book is that: "...the success of capitalism will lead to a form of corporatism and a fostering of values that are hostile to capitalism, especially among intellectuals. The intellectual and social climate needed to allow entrepreneurship to thrive will not exist in advanced capitalism; it will be replaced by socialism in some form. There will not be a revolution, but merely a trend in parliaments to elect social democratic parties of one stripe or another. He argued that capitalism will collapse from within as democratic majorities vote for the creation of a welfare state and place restrictions upon entrepreneurship that will burden and destroy the capitalist structure." He may yet be vindicated.

You should read "The Road to Hell" by Michael Maren, which discusses the significant role that aid - especially food aid - played in the dynamics that lead to civil-war/famine Somalia. One of the more eye-opening books that you'll ever read. If you get a chance to talk to aid workers that lived in Africa - not those that went on a two week charity junket, that can also be very illuminating. My wife spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer over there and the experience significantly changed her thinking with regards to the nature and extent of the aid that the rest of the world should provide if the aim is actually to foster development, rather dependence and corruption.

The best concentration of high-quality trad routes in the 9/10 range in Washington? My vote goes to be "The Bend" at Tieton, but don't tell anyone.

In my opinion, we should be concerned about absolute rather than relative poverty, and studies that fail to take absolute income with all of the proper adjustments for purchasing power parity, pre-and-post tax income are not only inaccurate and misleading, they are also extremely harmful in that they make it more difficult to pinpoint the real problems that society needs to address. If you can't identify the problems accurately, then it's impossible to solve them, and quite likely that significant resources will be diverted towards solving problems that are less acute. Once you have reliable data, then you've got to have a moral/philosophical discussion about what constitutes a problem or a moral failing on society's part. Are societies that provide more generous welfare benefits irrespective of the ability to work necessarily more ethical? I would argue that they aren't, especially if they have structural factors in their labor market which effectively price the least educated and skilled out of the job market forever. Are they more desirable places to live? Not necessarily. I also think that the long-term viability of various social/economic arrangements fostered by the welfare policies enacted by various societies is worth bringing into consideration. Is a scenario in which people expect to spend the majority of their adult life sustained by the work of others, irrespective of the cost, necessarily more just? As far as I'm concerned, the only people that an ethical society are obliged to take care of are are those where those who are incapable of helping themselves, and are suffering on account of factors for which they are not responsible. This generally includes children, those too old to work, or the disabled. If poor children aren't getting the medical care they need, then I would agree that this is a situation that society has a moral obligation to address. Whether we'd agree on what constitutes the best solution to this and other social problems is another matter. With regards to Africa and Asia, how do account for the vastly different levels of income, development, literacy, etc of those two regions today, despite the fact that they were roughly equivalent to one another in terms of GDP per capita, etc as late as the early 1960's? Is this because the US and Europe have given more aid to Asia than Africa since then, or are there perhaps other reasons? Was it US aid to China that's lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of Poverty since the late 1970s?

I think the most accurate way to compare incomes is absolute terms, once it's been corrected for purchasing power parity, taxes, government transfers, etc - and that's what the chart compares. As in the case of the infant mortality data, it's important to analyze the data and make sure that you are comparing apples to apples before drawing broad conclusions from the data under consideration. I have some other comments that I'll have to save until I have a bit more time.

So if people in a country where the median income is $15K have a smaller percentage of people making less than that amount than a country where the median income is $35K, are the people on the low end of the scale in the low-income country better off than those on the low end of the scale in the high-income country when you account for purchasing power parity, etc - just because their income is closer to a lower median income? This reminds me of the claim that the US has the worst infant mortality rates in the developed world. I've seen this claim trotted out a gazillion times, followed by a series of lamentations concerning the wretched state of American healthcare, etc, etc, etc - without anyone ever asking if the definition of "Infant Mortality" in one country is the same as the next. Search the literature for five seconds and you find out that it's not. "Registration artifacts in international comparisons of infant mortality. * Kramer MS, * Platt RW, * Yang H, * Haglund B, * Cnattingius S, * Bergsjo P. Department of Pediatrics, McGill University Faculty of Medicine, Montreal, Canada. michael.kramer@mcgill.ca Large differences in infant mortality are reported among and within industrialised countries. We hypothesised that these differences are at least partly the result of intercountry differences in registration of infants near the borderline of viability (<750 g birthweight) and/or their classification as stillbirths vs. live births. We used the database of the International Collaborative Effort (ICE) on Perinatal and Infant Mortality to compare infant mortality rates and registration practices in Norway (n = 112484), Sweden (n = 215 908), Israeli Jews (n = 148123), Israeli non-Jews (n = 52 606), US Whites (n = 6 074 222) and US Blacks (n = 1328332). To avoid confounding by strong secular trends in these outcomes, we restricted our analysis to 1987-88, the most recent years for which data are available in the ICE database for all six groups. Compared with Norway (with an infant mortality rate of 8.5 per 1000), the crude relative risks [95% confidence intervals] were 0.75 [0.69,0.81] in Sweden, 0.97 [0.90,1.06] in Israeli Jews, 1.98 [1.81,2.17] in Israeli non-Jews, 0.95 [0.89,1.01] in US Whites and 2.05 [1.95,2.19] in US Blacks. For borderline-viable infants, fetal deaths varied twofold as a proportion of perinatal deaths, with Norway reporting the highest (83.9% for births <500 g and 61.8% for births 500-749 g) and US Blacks the lowest (40.3% and 37.6% respectively) proportions. Reported proportions of live births <500 g varied 50-fold from 0.6 and 0.7 per 10000 in Sweden and Israeli Jews and non-Jews to 9.1 and 33.8 per 10000 in US Whites and Blacks respectively. Reported proportions 500-749 g varied sevenfold from 7.5 per 10000 in Sweden to 16.2 and 55.4 in US Whites and Blacks respectively. After eliminating births <750 g, the relative risks (again with Norway as the reference) of infant mortality changed drastically for US Whites and Blacks: 0.82 [0.76,0.87] and 1.42 [1.33,1.53] respectively. The huge disparities in the ratio of fetal to infant deaths <750 g and in the proportion of live births <750 g among these developed countries probably result from differences in birth and death registration practices. International comparisons and rankings of infant mortality should be interpreted with caution. PMID: 11862950 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] What happens when you look at the actual amount of disposable income available to the poor in the US versus Europe when you look at purchasing-power-parity adjusted dollars that wind up in people's hands instead of defining poverty in terms relative to median incomes that differ dramatically from one another? If I moved to Vietnam, I would probably go from a "average" to "tall" relative to the median male height, but I would not be any taller in absolute terms. If absolute height was a proxy for well-being, would I actually be any better off? The poor make less money relative to the median income in the US, but are they actually worse off in absolute terms? Neither the data nor migration trends, etc bear this claim out.

Is there any belief or behavior or practice out there which will not inspire a reflexive urge to find an analogue in one's own culture in order to render all belief, behaviors, or practices morally equivalent to one another? If I were to post an article on say, slavery in contemporary Africa, such as this: "Chattel slavery in Sudan The enslavement of the Dinkas in southern Sudan may be the most horrific and well-known example of contemporary slavery. According to 1993 U.S. State Department estimates, up to 90,000 blacks are owned by North African Arabs, and often sold as property in a thriving slave trade for as little as $15 per human being. "There he found several Dinka men hobbling, their Achilles tendons cut because they refused to become Muslims." —from an ASI report on Sudanese slavery Animist tribes in southern Sudan are frequently invaded by Arab militias from the North, who kill the men and enslave the women and children. The Arabs consider it a traditional right to enslave southerners, and to own chattel slaves (slaves owned as personal property). Physical mutilation is practiced upon these slaves not only to prevent escape, but to enforce the owners' ideologies. According to an ASI report: "Kon, a thirteen-year-old Dinka boy, was abducted by Arab nomads and taken to a merchant's house. There he found several Dinka men hobbling, their Achilles tendons cut because they refused to become Muslims. Threatened with the same treatment the boy converted." In a detailed article by Charles Jacobs for the American Anti-Slavery Group (ASI), Jacobs recounts how a 10-year-old child was taken in a raid on her village in southern Sudan, and branded by her master with a hot iron pot." I would expect the folks in this forum and their ideological contemporaries outside of it to argue that given A) the history of slavery in America and B) The fact that we have failed to pass a national "Living Wage Law," we are in no position to criticize this practice - since our own forms of nominal wage/debt slavery are really not that much different than the actual slavery depicted in this article, and that until we address our own shortcomings in this regard we should refrain from rendering moral judgments on those who engage in this practice.

There are literally hundreds of industries in the US that have to contend with overseas competition, quite a number of which are just as old as GM, yet somehow they've managed to stay in business and avoid amassing the tottering heap of health-care and retirement obligations that GM and the UAW claim are the primary reason for the company's current woes. Yup - nothing whatsoever to do with churning out unappealing defect-laden and recall-prone crap that's resulted in a steady erosion in market share ever since their products became subject to competition. Sorry, this line of reasoning just doesn't fly, and certainly doesn't constitute a logical argument for nationalizing health care.

Good TR here: http://oregonkayaking.net/rivers/grand_canyon/grand_canyon.html

Still seems like the additional payroll taxes required to fund such a system would be greater than any costs associated with limitations on labor mobility due to pension issues, and would effectively saddle all businesses with the same costs that have crippled the domestic auto companies, and turn the entire country into a giant GM. There's also the question of how all of this would work with respect to existing 401(k) plans, IRA assets, etc. If you raise labor costs in this manner, the odds are quite high that this would render the entire country less competitive, and the reduction in total employment/wages would result in spiraling tax rates to fund the national pension liability with fewer workers or cuts in the said benefits. There's also a strong likelihood that since costs associated with having employees - whether that's wages, health benefits, etc - get tossed into a single bucket - any increase in these costs would put additional downward pressure on money-wages. Rising health-insurance costs are responsible for quite a bit of the oft-noted stagnation in real money wages, even as total compensation has been increasing. I'd personally rather take all of my compensation as cash, have a personal tax-deduction for health insurance expenses, and increased tax incentives/deductions for retirement savings. I'm sure the folks in the health biz appreciate the tax-incentive-fueled bonanza they reap every month for whatever it costs for my employer to pay for full coverage, but I'd much rather pay a fraction of these costs for high-deductible coverage and put the difference into an interest-bearing, tax-free HSA account that I control and either invest or spend the rest as I see fit.

I think a quick look at the percent of the private workforce that's actually covered by a defined benefit plan would go a long way towards answering this question. This also assumes that someone covered by a pension is actually forgoing better opportunities elsewhere, which is quite a stretch when you consider what kind of skill-sets you typically find in private sector workers who are hanging around for a pension. Is the 55-year old guy sitting atop of the seniority ladder and punching rivets in 747's for a living really forgoing a golden opportunity to work elsewhere for higher wages?

You still have to demonstrate that the costs of diminished labor mobility would be less than the costs of the government providing everyone with a pension benefit that exceeds those already provided by Social Security and Medicare...not to mention the costs associated with increasing the tax burden on employees and employers in a manner that's sufficient to fund the program. Not an easy feat. Once the new regs kick in and state and local governments have to account for future pension and health-care liabilities on their balance sheets (for bond issuing purposes) - which will happen soon, it will be interesting to see how receptive the public will be to tax hikes to fund other people's retirement. This will be especially true for those that retire at 55 with benefits that are far more generous than anyone in the private sector gets, after 30 years of 40 hour work-weeks. "This system would allow workers to transfer between industries and geographic regions without having to start from scratch, something that would certainly help the 'market' resolve labor supply and demand imbalances without additional government intervention." Doesn't the market address labor imbalances through either laying off workers if there are more than the business can support, or offering higher wages to attract all of the workers that they need? With respect to mobility between regions, you'd have to figure out how likely someone is to move to an entirely different region in response to a better opportunity that they are free to seek without compromising their pension, as opposed to taking a better job closer to home. Intangibles like ties to family, friends, hobbies, etc probably limit labor mobility as much or more than tangible factors like retaining a pension.

I actually don't think that you can prove that this problem is endemic to all "legacy" companies, so you'd do just as well to abandon that line of argument. With respect to the nationalizing retirement - we already have something like that called social security - and the magnitude of the liabilities there is already more than a bit problematic. Leaving that aside, you'd have to attempt to quantify what extent, if any, the availability of pensions has on labor mobility, attempt to calculate what this costs, and then make the argument that these costs are lower than those that would result from the government providing everyone with a guaranteed income in retirement over and above the costs of Social Security and Medicaid. Then you'd have to determine how to pay for it, and attempt to calculate the effect that a net increase in taxes sufficient to pay for this new program would have on economic output - and again compare this to the benefits of increased labor mobility for that subset of the private workforce that is actually covered by a defined benefit plan. The essential problem with GM is a rapidly diminishing market share, which has fallen for a number of reasons, the foremost of which is producing products that are less appealing to consumers than those made by their competitors. If this continues for long enough, you go out of business. End of story. This happens to millions of people who do not work in the auto business every year, but no one gives a shit, much less proposes fundamentally restructuring the economy on their behalf. Should the public be asked to maintain everyone's employment, even if they produce something that no one wants or needs on after the development of superior alternatives? Should the public have guaranteed employment to candlemakers after the advent of the lightbulb? To buggy-makers after the arrival of the automobile? Would the nation be better off if such laws had been enacted?

No one, much less GM, has claimed this. How would shifting their liabilities onto the public via nationalization of these liabilities amount to anything else? The only reason why I hope that domestic automakers stay in business is so that the public doesn't end up footing the bill for the labor-management co-cluster that they created for themselves. Not easy if you are selling an overpriced product with a reputation for poor quality that no one is especially interested in buying, but hopefully they find a way.

Are you talking money wages or total compensation vis-a-vis foreign automakers? All employees of foreign automakers are unionized? How does any of this absolve union leadership for their role in using strikes to force their employers into adopting the compensation/benefits package that you cite as a central reason for the dire situation that the company now finds itself in? Also, none of this addresses the question of why all long-lived industries are not suffering from this same set of problems.

I'm not waving a flag, just stating a fact. Feel free to return to your previous arguments.

"Given your free market POV, I'm sure you'd agree with me that such a single payer system would be a good idea." Single nationwide health-insurance market with the tax-benefits associated with paying for health benefits transferred to individuals rather than tethered to employers - yes. Nationalization of health-care, no. None of this would help domestic automakers, who - along with their employees - dug their own graves.

No, I don't believe you can, actually. GM self destructed due to a number of factors, the primary one being that they did not choose to produce what the market wanted to buy. Their profit margin, for example, on their SUV and light truck lines is hefty: they just stuck with these monsters long after demand for them began to decline. In addition, GM suffers more than other automakers from a poor pay in to pay out ratio for their enormous retirement/benefit plans. Ironically, this is a result of their longevity, or continued success; the longer they stay in business and more productive (per employee) they become, the more retired folks they need to cover with fewer active workers paying into the plan. GM is a poster child for doing away with corporation based retirement benefits plans and replacing them with a single nationwide plan which would level the playing field for older companies, like GM, who have tried to make good on their commitment to their retired workforce. In addition, such a nationwide plan would make our workforce much more fluid, a good thing to correct regional and industry by industry labor imbalances. Given your free market POV, I'm sure you'd agree with me that such a single payer system would be a good idea. I've read nothing credible which points to unions as the main cause of GM's demise. If your argument about longevity being the sole reason for GM's woes, why isn't every single employer that's been in existence since for 60 years or more suffering from these same problems? Are you honestly claiming that the union had no role whatsoever - via strikes or the threat thereof - in securing the pay and benefits which have rendered their labor uncompetitive? The "jobs bank," which has been paying thousands of workers full-time wages with benefits for doing nothing since the early 80's was management's idea? It's also worth noting that the reason that the American car makers favored the big gas guzzlers was that, given their cost structure, they made little or no money on sub-compacts that sell for far less than trucks and SUV's.

"But - areas where works are more vunerable, such as hotel, fatory workers, jaintors, the folks who actually work with their hands, unions are a good thing. Without collective bargining they would get screwed." Your original argument was that without Union protection we'd all revert back to late 19th century working conditions, or some variant thereof, no? This is a new argument, but what of the old one? With regards to hotel workers, factory workers, etc - there are a considerable number of these workers who have made a voluntary decision to perform these jobs for the wage that the employer offered. My sense is that these people sized up the options available to them given their geographic situation, skill-set, and education level and concluded that this was the best way for them to make a living at the present time. How, exactly, is this being screwed? If the state were either preventing them from moving, seeking employment in other fields, advancing their skills, etc - or if they were contending with a national monopoly in which all factories, hotels, etc were controlled by a single entity - then I'd agree with you. The only place where this actually happens these is under communist/socialist rule.

Can you cite an example where this has actually happened? Union representation in the private workforce has been plummeting for decades, but the laws are still on the books, no? I can cite quite a number of examples where unions have been instrumental in destroying the basis of their own employment, such as at GM. I'd also don't think that government workers should have any privileges or covered by any rules that don't apply to all private sector workers. If the rules are good enough for folks working outside the government, they should be plenty good enough for the folks working inside it. This would effectively eliminating membership for government workers, but if they have to make do with the same rules and regulations that apply to the rest of us, this should hardly be considered either unfair or a hardship that they should be granted protection from.

I agree that overpaying top management is a bad business practice, but if the board of directors, elected by the shareholders to represent their interests, voluntarily overpays the CEO - how is this the business of anyone outside of the company anymore than it would be if someone decided that you were worth less than whatever it is that your current employer decides to pay you?

Even if this is true - and I think it is only partially true, and omits the contributions that advancements in productivity brought about by the dreaded marketplace (against a constant current of opposition from guilds, unions, etc) have made towards creating a world in which it's possible for a vastly expanding population produce enough to live on without constant toil (e.g. the 8 hour work-day), etc, etc, etc, etc - this does not constitute an argument for why they are necessary or beneficial today. None of the regulations that you have cited owe their continued existence to unions, so what arguments can you make for their necessity today? If all workers would be better off under unions, how can you account for the existence of people who do not wish to belong to them, much less for the fact that the percentage of people in the private labor force has been steadily declining for decades?

Unionization has certainly done wonders for the domestic auto industry, hasn't it. The "card-check" legislation currently under consideration, that would replace secret ballot voting procedures in unionization votes with a system in which workers have to fill out cards in which they openly declare their votes should re-introduce quite a number of workers to the joys of Teamster style persuasion. "Hey there - we noticed that you checked the no box on that card yesterday...." The TSA workers are set to be unionized via a bill passing through congress as well. In short order the TSA will combine all of the efficiency of GM, with the charm of the Teamsters.

This essay might warrant a read in the meantime. Not entirely on topic, but still germane. http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_2_when_islam.html