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Since you couldn't find a better source than the CATO institute I have to believe that's just so much bullcrap.Sadly not so much. Thanks to our unionized educational system, costs have skyrocketed while quality has - at best - flatlined.
Department of Education
Spending Cuts Summary
Here are proposed spending cuts to the department, which should be closed down.
Downsizing the Federal Government | Department of Education | The CATO Institute
Artificially increase the price?!? LOL!When you artificially increase the price of a product or service, you lower the demand. This works the same for labor as it does with anything else - which means that when you artificially increase the cost of hiring workers, you ensure that fewer workers will be hired. What is the purchasing power of the unemployed?
Since you couldn't find a better source than the CATO institute I have to believe that's just so much bullcrap.
Artificially increase the price?!? LOL!
Sellers set the price at whatever the market will bear. Very, very few things in the market place sell at what businesses call "cost", which is the actual cost of production, including labor, plus some artificial profit margin. If you're going to call anything artificial it's these profit margins businesses set for themselves.
Oh, I'll grant "competition" does tend to make prices cluster but cost of production has little to do with where those clusters fall. What you're saying might work for two fruit stand owners just down the block from each other but it works for damn little else.yes. When you increase the cost of production (whether through unionization of the labor force, increased burden of governance, or whatever), you increase the price, thereby lowering demand. "what the market will bear" is a wide range. At 8 dollars, it will simply want more than at 16. There is a price at which demand becomes effectively nil (or low enough that you are unable to sell enough to stay in business), at which point you have moved "beyond what it will bear". But it's not as if the market will purchase 1 million blueberry muffins at 50 cents a piece, and zero at 75. Competition generally forces all profit margins within a relatively tight range within the same good or service; when you increase the cost of production, you simply move the top and bottom price/margin up in dollars.
Oh, I'll grant "competition" does tend to make prices cluster but cost of production has little to do with where those clusters fall. What you're saying might work for two fruit stand owners just down the block from each other but it works for damn little else.
But assuming the manufacturer refuses to take less profit, which is cheaper? Spending an extra $0.50 on a given item because labor costs are higher - or spending an extra $0.50 in taxes to compensate underpaid workers?
Many conservatives go on and on about taxes and welfare and never bother to question why people need welfare. They always argue it's sloth but we both know that, for most people getting assistance, that's just not true.
No, you are confusing "capitalism" with "corporatism". Too Big To Fail isn't a Capitalist dogma, it's a Corporatist one.
the labor theory of value?!? :lamo this would be the one that even Lenin eventually had to abandon as not taking into effect the necessary value added of capital? :lol:
But okay, I'll bite. If a robot builds a car, and an overseer makes sure the Robot doesn't break down, which entity is building the car?
yup. we called it "feudalism".
the Industrial Revolution.
Fascinating. Are you suggesting that people on the farms were exploiting themselves? Or is it just that you see "labor" and think "exploitation!".
actually the assumptions in that thought model are pretty basic. the Japanese auto makers were able to enter into and take massive swathes of the American market share because they were producing a superior product which they were able to make for less than their UAW American Competitors.
The rise of the American Middle Class really began with the independent tradesmen and farmers of the 18th century. The rise of the modern industrial-age middle class really began in the 1920's. The UAW was founded in 1935.
That is unfortunately incorrect. Unions are not responsible for the defeat of Communism; containment was.
Sadly not so much. Thanks to our unionized educational system, costs have skyrocketed while quality has - at best - flatlined.
Well hell, let's raise the minimum wage to $1 bn a year, and we can all be rich!
When you artificially increase the price of a product or service, you lower the demand. This works the same for labor as it does with anything else - which means that when you artificially increase the cost of hiring workers, you ensure that fewer workers will be hired. What is the purchasing power of the unemployed?
Oh, I'll grant "competition" does tend to make prices cluster but cost of production has little to do with where those clusters fall
But assuming the manufacturer refuses to take less profit, which is cheaper? Spending an extra $0.50 on a given item because labor costs are higher - or spending an extra $0.50 in taxes to compensate underpaid workers?
Many conservatives go on and on about taxes and welfare and never bother to question why people need welfare
Exactly.- the cost of production tends to be similar for all surviving producers; which is what allows that clustered price range.
Reducing the cost is no guarantee a company will lower the price. If they reduce cost by, say, $1 per widget, they most likely will not lower prices by $1 per widget. They'll still take their slide rules and figure out the optimal price. That may even come out to be the same as it was before their costs were lowered. Their profit will still be higher than their competition.those able to suddenly dramatically lower their price of production will snatch up market share by being able to lower prices below what their competitors can maintain until they make the same improvements.
If workers make less money they will also be spending less at the store. The money to sustain demand has to come from somewhere.Not at all equitable. Lower cost of production will not necessitate me spending the exact same amount subsidizing workers.
Then considering Welfare's 50 years history - not counting the decades of dying poor before welfare - I'd say they're doing a bang-up job!that is incorrect. conservatives have considered at length why people need welfare, and how to work on fixing that.
“Our success or failure will mark a turning point not only for our union but for the entire labor movement,” Lee Saunders, the new AFSCME president, told his members. Attendees noted how few changes in labor law they had been able to get through Congress since President Obama’s election. Union members in San Diego and San Jose, two cities that voted heavily for Obama in 2008, mourned the overwhelming passage this month of ballot measures in those cities curbing public-sector pension benefits: In both, two-thirds of voters approved the measures. Hanging over the crowd was the crushing loss unions experienced in Wisconsin three weeks ago, when GOP governor Scott Walker won 38 percent of the votes of union members and apparently carried a majority of private-sector-union members.
But even as AFSCME delegates convened in Los Angeles, they received word of yet another blow. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case out of California that if a union wants to make a special demand from members for political activity in addition to its regular fees, it must give them ample notice so they can ask for their money back. But the court, in an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, went further and indicated the union must also make its fee assessment opt-in instead of opt-out...
The court stated its belief that “the general rule — individuals should not be compelled to subsidize private groups or private speech — should prevail.” Epps interprets all this to mean that the court is sending a clear message to Young and the National Right to Work organization: “Bring us a case and we will void the agency shop altogether.”..
After Governor Walker ended mandatory collection of union dues for public-sector workers last year, AFSCME’s Local 24 in Madison, which represented 22,300 Wisconsin state workers, saw its membership shrink by two-thirds, to 7,100. Similarly, the American Federation of Teachers has lost 6,000 of its 17,000 members. Small wonder: Teachers’-union dues in Wisconsin range from a hefty $700 a year up to more than $1,000.
That kind of shift explains why the unions fought Walker’s reforms so bitterly — they viewed it as a matter of life and death for their political machines. Similarly, you can expect a titanic battle this November in California, where a ballot measure going by the title of Stop Special Interest Money Now has qualified for the ballot. It would prohibit both corporations and unions from collecting political contributions from employees through payroll deduction unless annual written consent is given...
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