JayB

I'd encourage you to learn why Phelps and others of his standing oppose minimum wage laws and think that there are better mechanisms for achieving the same goal. My "plan" was more of a thought experiment to get people to think about who actually bears the brunt of the costs imposed by this policy. Swap Microsoft programmers getting a minimum of $200K for burger flippers getting $15 an hour if you like, the key problem remains the same - forcing employers to pay wages that exceed the economic value generated by their employees will not benefit the employer or the employee. Not so sure this is a strawman. Just ask the guys working for GM. As far as the price of gas and the gas-pump jockey is concerned, this is an interesting case. For the sake of simplicity, assume fixed gas consumption and mandatory full-service. Prices go up, people pay more, and no gas-jockeys lose their jobs. However, just because gas jockeys have a protected job, this doesn't mean that increasing prices will lead to no job losses. When non-discretionary spending goes up, discretionary spending goes down - unless real wages increase by the same amount as expenses - and people are left with the choice of either assuming more debt, putting less money away in savings, or reducing their discretionary spending. Folks who make their living in industries fueled by discretionary spending will eventually sustain job losses that are proportional to the reduction in the amount of money that people have to spend on whatever it is that they produce. And even though the gas jockey might have a protected job, most or all of the nominal increase in his salary will be wiped out by the higher prices that he'll pay for the consumer goods that he spends most of his meager income upon. I actually don't support the idea of a minimum income, but it seems like this is the idea behind most people's support for minimum wage laws. I think Phelps has a better idea, and although his Nobel Prize doesn't make him infallible, I hope it will at least give him a wider audience.

Glad we settled that.

You're kidding right? Is this really how power works in the real world!? I really hope this is a typo. If not, you're better off sticking to supply/demand diagrams and Milton Friedman quotations. If the recognition of minority rights was only contingent upon their power to assert them in direct contravention of a ruthless majority's wishes, then people who found themselves in the numerical minority would never succeed in securing them. When they succeed it's not because those in power lack the capacity to subjugate them, but because they lack the desire to do so. They lack the desire to do so only when subjugating them entails political costs that they are unwilling to bear, namely those which undermine the continuation of their particular party's, class', family's, cabal's, tribe's, etc. power. It is when minority wishes threaten to become mainstream demands that entrenched power takes notice. This, and the fear of this: has provided more incentive for "moral reawakening" than enlightened despots suddenly "seeing the light". You are obviously an intelligent guy, so I hope that one day you aspire to use your intelligence for something more worthwhile than serving as the intellectual equivalent of the towel-boy, or more aptly - the cookie - in Foucault's ideological S&M dungeon where nothing matters except "power relations." Thankfully the leaders of the civil rights movement heeded wiser council than your own and correctly predicted the outcome of an all-out race war waged against the other 90% of society, and chose a moral crusade over a millitant suicide mission. History is full of examples of ruthless minorities that have held subject populations in check indefinitely, but none that I am aware of where a ruthless majority has been brought to heel by a determined minority. If the only perogative that the white majority in this country responded to was power and they were as ruthless and machiavellian as you suggest and seem to believe, then Jim Crow laws would have never gone away. Clearly,and thankfully, MLK did not believe this. How to explain this perspective? Perhaps these political revenge-fantasies are some kind of an intellectual hangover from a youth spent getting one's ass stuffed into a locker - which might explain their enduring popularity amongst academics Have fun playing with words, living the life of the cloistered parlor-radical, and "transgressing the heteronormative boundary conditions" and all that. Yawn.

Good to make the distinction about groups who use violence. In each of these three groups history, they had violence brought upon them. In each of these three cases, it was our government who orchestrated that violence. And I am not sure what your second point is: that dumb girls, stupid niggas, and lazy workers (or, gasp, middle easterners) would have never thought that all people were created equal and should have equal say in how they are governed if they hadn't read that shit that these brilliant white guys wrote? Come on. The fact that it was a bunch of white guys was an accident of history, rather than any particular merit associated with their race. If the orientation of the continents relative to the poles had been different, the distribution of relatively docile herd animals had been different, Roman millitary had been less ruthless and efficient, etc, etc, etc, then the conglomeration of historical accidents that lead to the evolution of these ideas may never have happened, or the people who happened to be around at the time and place where they had their long genesis probably would have been sporting a different complexion. You were the one who originally pointed out their race, not me, so I suspect I'm less fixated on this point than you. As for your second point - who knows whether they would have discovered them or on their own or not - but they were conspicously absent from the globe prior to their genesis in the West, which suggests that they were not entirely self-evident to all peoples at all times. Unless you think that polygamy, genital mutilation, and the female ninja-suit are halmarks of enlightened equality, present evidence suggests that even though people all over the world are aware of these ideas, their enthusiasm for translating them into a legally binding moral code that they impose on themselves varies widely. Pretending that women had nothing to do with their own liberation belittles the role of women in bringing about this outcome, but pretending that the social context that they were able to liberate themselves within belittles the role of society in this process.

The loss of employment will be proportional to the increase. I don't think anyone would argue that when an employer has to pay an employee $15 an hour for work that only generates $10 worth of value per hour, the employer will have to find a way to increase the value of the said person's output to a level that yields a profit, or fire the worker. The higher the wage, the more education and training is required to generate value that exceeds it. If anyone were to mandate a minimum wage for computer programmers of $200,000 per year, Microsoft would probably get rid of all but the most brilliant, highly educated, highly trained folks and source the work to people living somewhere where their pay reflected the true economic value of their contributions. For someone that's marginally literate and has no marketable skills, the hourly wages that most people are positing as "living wages" might as well be $200,000 per year, because under these circumstance the odds that that the cost of their labor will exceed its economic value are quite high. For folks at the very bottom of the economic ladder this is often true already. People who have been filling their gas tanks lately are probably also no strangers to the notion that as the price of something increases, so does the incentive to find ways to use less of it. Increasing the cost of labor and de-linking it from its real economic value will have this effect, and it will increase in direct proportion to the gap between what their forced to pay and what the labor-input is worth. Of the two alternatives, I like the subsizided wages better than a mandatory minimum wage because the costs become clear, and are no longer concentrated amongst the least employable people and small business owners. If the costs are clear and are at least partly coming out of the activist class's wallet, they'd have to ask some hard, concrete questions instead of thinking about these issues in terms of quasi-moral nebulosities like "economic justice." We'd have to ask who should get the benefit of a minimum income. Everyone, or just those with dependents under the age of 18? Is it really an economic injustice if the kid working at McDonald's to save up for an iPod is not paid an hourly-wage sufficient to sustain a family of four? What about the person who is working part time at a retail shop in order to keep busy and get out of the house, but is married to someone making $90K? I think if people had to think about these questions, and knew that they'd be footing the bill, they'd think mighty hard about who they wanted to extend this benefit to, just what constituted an acceptable minimum income, and how to increase real wages for the folks at the bottom.

The cost would be the difference between the sum total of wages earned by the people who earn less than the minimum income. The existing welfare bureacracy could administer the program. The employers that pay wages lower than those necessary to generate the minimum income report the wages, the government calculates the difference between the said wages and the minimum income, and issues a check for the difference. I didn't say that the program would be without costs or consequences, but those would be clear from the outset. If you want to establish a minimum income, be prepared to pay for it through higher taxes or fewer services, or both. This would probably focus people's thinking on ways to help people gain the skills and education necessary to earn a "living wage" on their own, rather than passing laws that make it harder for them to earn any wage at all.

Edmund S. Phelps says... Read Me And me... And Me... The main benefits from my perspective is that it makes the cost of these policies clear, which should foster some clear thinking about the costs and benefits associated with guaranteeing a minimum income, and transfers the costs away from the poorest, least skilled people and onto society as a whole.

This would only affect employers who offer wages that result in an income below the minimum, and could pretty easily be addressed by leaving the minimum wage where it is.

You are assuming that there are no costs associated with regulating the labor market in this manner. I don't think that most economists would agree with you. The costs associated with fixing the price of labor above the real value of the said labor are significant, but are not easy to measure because they are obscured by other variables and widely dispersed. The costs are also disproportionately borne by the poorest and least educated people in society. The benefit of my idea is that it makes it easy to directly calculate these costs. If people who see the real bill for this policy think it's too expensive, then they'd have the opportunity to asses whether or not they think that mandating a minimum income is still a good idea, and if so, how much they are personally willing to pay for it through higher taxes on themselves. People might also take an interest in figuring out how to raise real wages for people at the bottom of the social ladder, instead of advocating for policies that make them less employable and quickly inflate away the nominal value of their increased wages.

A minority encountering violence while conducting a campaign to achieve political ends is one thing, a minority conducting a violent campaign to achieve a political goal is quite another. If all that women or blacks or whoever had going for them was the power to coerce or intimidate, they would have gained nothing. The only reason that they ultimately succeeded in gaining recognition of their political rights is that their leaders recognized that appealing to the moral framework outlined in the nation's founding documents would be the most effective strategy. This made sense, sense they themselves were inspired by the ideals outlined in these documents. Take the same women, armed with the same documents, and transport them to 19th century Arabia and they'd have endured considerably more violence to considerably less political effect. Go one step further and ask yourself whether or not they'd have even been literate, much realize that such ideas existed, if they had born anywhere other than the West.

The Roth IRA limits were set under the Clinton administration in conjunciton with the Republican Congress, not the current Congress. The current democratic wave was a strong repudiation of the hardball, right wing tactics of the current administration. Pombo and Santourm are my favorite ousters. Some decent moderate Republicans got caught up in the tidal wave, but they did not have the stomach to stand up to their party leaders when it counted, so the public wanted a big change. The strangle hold that the republicans had on the legislative process was what allowed them to pass some really crummy laws and blow up the budget while keeping the party lockstep. And it was their ultimate downfall. I think the dems proposed laws for their early days, minimum wage, negoiated drug prices for Medicare, and stem cell research are good starts. Lets see if the republicans go along with the modest proposals and if Bush still wants to appeal to the Christian base with a veto. And hoorah!!! I have a good compromise on the minimum wage issue would be for the people who believe this actually results in a sustained increase in total real-wages to the least skilled and educated people, and has no effect their ability to get jobs. Since the real issue here is income, rather than wages, stipulate what you think the minimum income for anyone working a full-time job should be. Instead of forcing employers to pay higher wages, establish a minimum income, and have the government kick-in the difference between the minimum income and what the people who earn the lowest wages actually make. This would accomplish the social goals that most well-intentioned people who support a minimum wage are after, without directly resulting in a bunch of unintended consequences that actually hurt the people that a minimum wage is supposed to help, and would help overcome some of the social objections to welfare. It would also make the bill for this kind of policy clear and concrete, and this would make it easier for people to weight the costs and benefits of the policy.

Thanks for the recommendation. Try downloading the "pomposity filter" and "Plain english language interpreter". They're real time savers. Seems to be stuck in a recursive loop. This is a too bad, because I was actually looking forward to reading its "Secret History of the Petticoat Jihad." Tashwhatever as lead author, Prole as editorial assistant and towel-boy.

I yield to the mighty Quipatron.

You must have the model that doesn't come with the "effective counterargument" upgrade. Way to make the most of what you've got, though. Good job.

The only posture befitting the father of the dictionary.

He was making vague references to his favorite johnson, and I returned the favor by incorporating a vague reference to my own favorite Johnson.

Hey - it's the electronic version of "the radio game," - being played by an adult. Clever stuff. "He thought he was a Lord amongst wits, but it turned out that he was only a wit amonst Lords."

You're kidding right? Is this really how power works in the real world!? I really hope this is a typo. If not, you're better off sticking to supply/demand diagrams and Milton Friedman quotations. If the recognition of minority rights was only contingent upon their power to assert them in direct contravention of a ruthless majority's wishes, then people who found themselves in the numerical minority would never succeed in securing them. When they succeed it's not because those in power lack the capacity to subjugate them, but because they lack the desire to do so.

And slaves, and native Americans, and Japanese Americans, and drinkers, for that matter. No doubt there is an ugly historical disconnect between our behavior and the full potential of the constitution. The supreme court has typically gone along with the 'tyranny of the majority' rather than enforcing the rights supposedly guaranteed by that document. And that is the salient point. The policies of slavery, male only voting, and Jim Crow laws survived because a majority of voters at the time supported them. When voters changed their attitudes, those policies went by the wayside. It's not 'those in power' that maintain unjust policies...it's us. We get the government we deserve. Guantanamo Bay, torture, and gay marriage bans are just the latest versions of this tyranny of the majority. These policies survive only because we continue to support them. But...we've made enormous progress towards realizing the full potential of that document. This was not tyranny of the majority as white men were not in the majority at these times, nor are they now. This is about power, not numbers. This same bunch of white men defined the legal and moral framework through which all subsequent groups recognized and asserted their rights. Is it just a coincidenc that the drive to end slavery and grant women the right to vote happened to originate within the societies in which the same dreaded white men established and enforced the rules? The said changes were brought about by appealling to the moral sensibilities of those in power, rather than any kind of recognition amongst the powerful that they no longer had the capacity to enforce the status quo. Generally I agree with your viewpoints. But not here. Blacks and women fought and still fight for their rights. When appealing to sensibilities failed, both of these groups (as well as labor unions for that matter) had to resort to fighting on many fronts. Each of these groups faced physical assaults, active resistance, and frightening campaigns against them. The resulting change in laws were a direct outcome of the ruling class no longer able to enforce their laws (or their exclusion of) these groups. I guess that we'll just have to disagree on this one. Yes, the suffragettes were courageous and faced resistance and intimidation and no small amount of derision - but they were inspired by and appealing to a moral framework encoded within the nation's founding documents that explicitly recognized and gave formal legal standing to a grand abstraction known as "inalienable rights." Since you are so familiar with history you'll no doubt recall that Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Wollenscraft all couched their arguments within a framework established by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The existence of this framework, and the power of the ideas contained within it, rather than their posession any kind of menacing physical power that left the men of their time cowering in fear, is what ultimately lead to the recognition of their rights. Exhibit A is the "Declaration of Sentiments" from the 1848 Women's Right's Convention in Sececca Falls: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. " I'm sorry - but had Wollenscraft et. al been transported to Mecca or Jeddah and made the same arguments "You know....inalienable rights....granted by the Creator.... the, uh, self evident ones...." They would have been met with mute incomprehension at best, and its fair to say that the outcome would have been rather different. I'm sorry, but it was ultimately the moral power that their arguments has in the western context of individual rights, and nothing else, that lead to women's liberation. If it were otherwise, then women never would have been subject to male domination in the first place, and women's status in the rest of the world would differ quite substantially from what we observe today.

And slaves, and native Americans, and Japanese Americans, and drinkers, for that matter. No doubt there is an ugly historical disconnect between our behavior and the full potential of the constitution. The supreme court has typically gone along with the 'tyranny of the majority' rather than enforcing the rights supposedly guaranteed by that document. And that is the salient point. The policies of slavery, male only voting, and Jim Crow laws survived because a majority of voters at the time supported them. When voters changed their attitudes, those policies went by the wayside. It's not 'those in power' that maintain unjust policies...it's us. We get the government we deserve. Guantanamo Bay, torture, and gay marriage bans are just the latest versions of this tyranny of the majority. These policies survive only because we continue to support them. But...we've made enormous progress towards realizing the full potential of that document. This was not tyranny of the majority as white men were not in the majority at these times, nor are they now. This is about power, not numbers. This same bunch of white men defined the legal and moral framework through which all subsequent groups recognized and asserted their rights. Is it just a coincidenc that the drive to end slavery and grant women the right to vote happened to originate within the societies in which the same dreaded white men established and enforced the rules? The said changes were brought about by appealling to the moral sensibilities of those in power, rather than any kind of recognition amongst the powerful that they no longer had the capacity to enforce the status quo.

I hate the initiative process for a few reasons, none of which really have anything to do with particular policy outcomes. The first reason is that I think that drafting good legislation to address complex problems requires mitigating way too many conflicting perogatives and interests for even the most responsible citizen to ponder in their spare time, and often requires a considerable degree of specialized expertise that's in short supply in the general population. This is one of the main reasons why we have full-time representatives and committee's etc, because the general public simply doesn't have the time or the expertise or the mandate to make informed decisions on most micro issues like assessing twelve different transit options. Circumventing this process by means of a direct popular vote leads straight to the Eyemanesque retardation that has prevailed in Washington State. The second reason I hate initiatives and referendums is that it allows politicians to weasel out of making tough, controversial votes by saying "Let the people decide." If you are a politician you should be expect to make these calls for the record so that people can accurately asses your performance and perspective, and vote for or against you on that basis. "Letting the people decide" is shirking the fundamental responsibiliy of their office and depriving them of the right to have an informed decision made on their behalf. The final reason I hate initiatives is that I have trouble with the idea of a majority having the right to determine the rights of a minority via a direct popular vote. I'm much more comfortable having the instantaneous popular will filtered through a full accountable legislature and subject to scrutiny by the judicial branch. I vote no on all initiatives and referenda regardless of whether I agree with the legislation or not.

"If you laid off the post-modern language generator a bit, perhaps you wouldn't so readily confuse yourself. As I've clearly stated in a non post-modern fashion, I am not of the opinion you've outlined above at all. If the KKK, or any other group came out if favor of gay marriage, I would support that endorsement for the same reasons I support my own; it is in accord with the equal protection clause. My objection any argument against gay marriage, regardless of the proponent, is because it violates the equal protection clause. I have an additional objection to the objection of gay marriage by many religious groups because they explicitly use biblical references to support their position. 'Ergo' they are proposing to violate the equal protection clause based on purely religious beliefs...a clear violation of the separation of church and state." I actually don't think the separation of church and state is compromised in any fashion by the existence of people who ground either their support of or opposition to particular policies in their particular religious perspective. What matters is the policies themselves, not the motivations or perspectives of the people who happen to support them. If would be more accurate for you to say that you base your objection to people using bibical references to support their position on your private perception of what constitutes separation of church and state, rather than what the founders actually intended or the law actually states.

Sideshow issue. No one here actually believes that the term 'marriage' is going to be purged from the lexicon, legal or otherwise. Perhaps we should discuss polygamy now. I thought that Off's point was that since the term marriage is loaded with both legal and moral/religious meanings, that it would be better to completely separate the two so that the state was only involved in the legal side via the civil union, and those that wanted to acquire the moral/spiritual sanction offered by a particular church or faith could feel free to do so if they wished.

What is group B's 'explicitly secular moral framework', exactly? Jungian psychotherapy. Randite Objectivism. Take your pick. The point of the example is that you seem to be of the opinion that its not the specific verbiage of the law that matters, but the motives of the people who support it. Ergo if the KKK came out in favor of affirmative action, the correct thing to do would be to oppose the legislation, no matter how it was constructed or what it's effect would be in practice.

panther, two things 1) i disagree with you about homosexuality being a choice. don't have time to look up old studies but it seems that homosexuality is a genetic thing 2) is this the first you've heard of people giving marriage a different title in a secular context? if so i find that frightening b/c the concept has been around a while. if you haven't heard of it clearly many of the religious side may not be listening to all the arguments and possible solutions either. I am as agnostic as they come and listen to NPR for like 11 hours a day at work, and I've never heard the solution framed like that before either. I've only ever heard of solutions that granted gay's civil unions, but reserved the term "marriage" for heterosexual unions. I've never heard of anyone proposing to eliminate the term "marriage" from legislation and replace it with civil unions for everyone before.