French Youth Protest Against Employment

[TREETOAD]

Higher interest rates should take care of 2/3 of those problems. Other than that, I'd eliminate all subsidies and tarriffs, scrap the minimum wage, eliminate the tax deduction for employer sponsored health care and transfer the deduction to individuals for HSA contributions, reduce the capital gains tax to zero, phase out the mortgage interest deduction, raise the maxiumum contributions for Roths and 401(K)'s, eliminate all legislation that forces governments to pay inflated union rates for work that the taxpayers foot the bill for, make every state a right-to-work state, outlaw unions for public employees, and get the line-item veto going for appropriations bills.

 

Your just an asshole

[JayB]

There's a pretty solid 60+ year consensus on this one amongst economists, and it can be verified by simple thought experiments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I beg to differ. It may be consensus among your Univ. Chi Friedmanite winger bretheren. Here's a list of 562 economists who would say otherwise:

 

http://www.epinet.org/stmt/economistsminwage200410web.pdf

 

An excerpt:

 

We believe that a modest increase in the minimum wage would improve the well-being of low-wage workers and would not have the adverse effects that critics have claimed. In particular, we share the view the Council of Economic Advisers expressed in the 1999 Economic Report of the President that “the weight of the evidence suggests that modest increases in the minimum wage have had very little or no effect on employment.” While controversy about the precise employment effects of the minimum wage continues, research has shown that most of the beneficiaries are adults, most are female, and the vast majority are members of low-income working families.

 

Yeah you can find lots of grist for whatever your particular mill is on the internet, but I was talking about papers more than form letters. I think you've got basically the Card and Krueger paper, but that's about it.

 

What I think is kind of interesting here is the fact that you seem to be projecting negative motives onto me because I disagree with your conclusions about how to best help the poor and unskilled. I'm pretty sure we want the same thing, but after spending a lot of time thinking and reading about these issues - I just can't agree with your approach. Even though I think that adopting the policies you favor would actually hurt the unskilled and the elderly, I don't recall accusing you of intentionally advocating policies that would harm them, and it's not like I've just been making bald assertions here - I've spent a fair amount of time outlining my arguments, and theres decade after decade's worth of scholarship out there that backs them up. You're obviously a smart guy, so why resort to things like this "nigrah and messican" business and the like?

[JayB]

Higher interest rates should take care of 2/3 of those problems. Other than that, I'd eliminate all subsidies and tarriffs, scrap the minimum wage, eliminate the tax deduction for employer sponsored health care and transfer the deduction to individuals for HSA contributions, reduce the capital gains tax to zero, phase out the mortgage interest deduction, raise the maxiumum contributions for Roths and 401(K)'s, eliminate all legislation that forces governments to pay inflated union rates for work that the taxpayers foot the bill for, make every state a right-to-work state, outlaw unions for public employees, and get the line-item veto going for appropriations bills.

 

Your just an asshole

 

I'm guessing that it was the line-item veto bit that really sent you over the edge.

[AlpineK]

Ya know I suppose if I wanted to expend the energy I could read all this economicspeak, and I bet I could come up with something to say. All I know is that I've been to France once and it was a fun time. They had better food at the restaurant at the top of La Grave than I've had at many restaurants in Seattle. Also the city of Grenoble was fairly nice; I saw a few bums at the train station but not to many.

 

The way I figure it France isn't too bad off no matter what policy they have. Perhaps we should argue about things closer to home.

 

Of course Jay hates France, and all I can say is...Go with the hate.

[JayB]

The funniest part is my ancestry is roughly 1/2 French. I think you can see it in the nose. This summer I my parents and I made a pilgrimage to the ancestral homeland in Illinois and found the gravestones of the 1st generation to land in the US. One French couple emmigrated in the 1850's, two out of three of their sons were killed in the civil war, and their too-young-for-combat son spawned the six kids that ultimately led to the last free-market nightmare blighting this board. Mysterious ways.

[AlpineK]

If only your family had stayed in France things would be so much better now.

[willstrickland]

- I've spent a fair amount of time outlining my arguments, and theres decade after decade's worth of scholarship out there that backs them up. You're obviously a smart guy, so why resort to things like this "nigrah and messican" business and the like?

 

Because 99.99% of your poltical cohorts that I hear advancing these very arguments do so with no intent to help these people as they view them as inferior and lesser beings. Now, you may very well be the Black Swan Event of the wingnutteratti and have moral motives for backing these policies, I think you are mistaken in your conclusions, but good for you if that's true about your motive. Having read your commentary on matters in general over a long period of time, I am hardly persuaded that this is the case. We could keep arguing about min wage, but it's the same argument that's been going on for 30+ years, with the same talking points on both sides.

 

What baffles me is how, as a free market capitalist type, you have no problems with excessive CEO compensation. Are you not a shareholder? You enjoy the fact that dividend yields are in the toilet historically while these inept crooks divert company cashflow into their own pockets and dilute the float with excessive op grants? They sit on each other's boards, collect a chunk there while approving the comp packages for each other..it's ridiculous. That's your money they're stealing. Who owns the corp? Last I checked it was shareholders.

 

[Fred_Beavon]

How refreshing it is to find someone of such high caliber posting to CascadeClimbers as JayB. I'm with you all the way!

 

In regards to minimum wage laws, I'd suggest Minimum Wage, Maximum Damage: How the Minimum Wage Law Destroys Jobs, Perpetuates Poverty, and Erodes Freedom from http://www.self-gov.org/mw.html

 

And regarding the French protestors, the following may be of interest.

 

France Labors at Folly

by Edward Hudgins

 

We can always count on the French to show us how holding the wrong moral values and following the wrong economic policies will produce a comedie that becomes tres tragique.

 

Hundreds of thousands of students have been taking to the streets from Paris to Lyon demonstrating and rioting against a new labor law that will allow employers to dismiss without cause employees 26 years old or younger within the first two years of being hired. France has some of Europe's most stringent laws restricting the freedom of employers to manage their labor force. It’s virtually impossible to get rid of workers who either aren’t performing their jobs well or who employers simply can’t afford to pay because demand drops for the goods and services produced by their enterprise. Not surprisingly, even when demand is high, employers will not hire costly workers because it would be extremely difficult to downsize if business is bad.

 

And costly they are! In France wages, labor rules and regulations are set by negotiations between the major unions, business groups and the government, that is, by corporatist collusion rather than voluntary contracts between employers and employees. The French government also mandates six weeks of paid vacation, lots of paid holidays and other benefits. Nice work if you can get it. The trouble is that one in ten can't.

 

Not surprisingly, unemployment in France has averaged over 10 percent for the past 15 years, with the current rate at 9.6 percent. Private sector job creation has been almost non-existent. With France's population stagnant, you'd think the demand for labor would be high. By contrast, America’s unemployment for the same period averaged just over 5 percent -- the current rate is 4.8 percent -- with 23 million net new jobs added to the economy -- and this with the population jumping by 40 million. America is a job creation machine!

 

But are the French who actually do have jobs better off? Not really. Per capita gross domestic product in that country is $29,000 compared to nearly $40,000 in America.

 

The French government in the late 1990s decided on a bizarre strategy to combat unemployment. It mandated a cut in the work week to 35 hours but without a corresponding pay cut, on the theory that employers would need to take on more workers to make up for those lost hours of production. It became a crime to work too much. Government agents literally kept watch for people who might be putting in too much time on the job. Like criminals meeting in dark bars to plan crimes, honest individuals had to meet secretly to plan productive activities. It was a nightmare right out of Atlas Shrugged.

 

And how were French employers supposed to pay for more workers? Ah, there's the problem. The employers didn't have piles of money sitting around or beaucoup bucks stuffed in their mattresses. To pay for extra workers they would need to increase the prices for their goods and services which would -- you guessed it -- hold down demand for those products, meaning less reason to hire more workers to make merchandise that people couldn't afford to buy. Is this the fabled logic from the country that gave us Descartes?

 

Add another perspective to this picture. Last summer poor, mostly young, Muslim immigrants from North Africa rioted, burned and looted throughout France in part out of frustration because their jobless rate was 40 percent. Part of the motivation for the new law allowing easier dismissals of workers is to remove the disincentive to hire such workers to begin with. And that is what has set off this latest wave of protests and riots by young students as well as union leaders who don't want to see their stranglehold on a dying economy loosened so it can breathe.

 

These failed economic policies have their origins in -- and have in turn fostered further -- the moral failings of France's petulant population. Its citizens think the world, society and their neighbors owe them a living and they demand secure jobs as a "right" to be paid for by others. If their whims aren't granted they consider themselves "slaves." Bottom line: They want the unearned. And how, exactly, do they think their economy, failing under such demands, will continue to meet them? Bottom line: They don't think. These children masquerading as adults are too busy throwing temper tantrums to ask such questions. Who would want to hire such crybabies to begin with?

 

It doesn't enter their minds or moral code to take personal responsibility for their own lives, to act like entrepreneurs by trying to make themselves the best employees possible so that their employers would work to keep them and to demand complete economic freedom so that they and their employers can prosper together.

 

The economic mess in France is the manifestation of a moral mess at the basis of all welfare states and is a preview of what's in store for America if we continue along the path of our Gallic cousins. Only a morality of responsible individualism, in France, America and in all countries, will bring both peace and prosperity.

 

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Hudgins is executive director of The Objectivist Center and its Atlas Society, which celebrates human achievement.

[cj001f]

Hudgins is executive director of The Objectivist Center and its Atlas Society, which celebrates human achievement.