Libertarians fail so hard at economics I can't even

[beerftw]

Every single powerful industry was the beneficiary of help from the government: railroads (free land and free chinese labor), airplanes (army paying for most advancements, even hiring Wright brothers), automobiles (with creation of roads, highways etc.), computers (internet technology), aerospace technology, green technology, oil (highly subsidized).

To deny that the US has benefited from this is like denying you need oxygen to breathe.

to confuse innovation and infrastructure with protectionism isnt a valid argument.it is a governments job to fund unprofitable technology so long as it is beneficial to a society.it is also a govt's job to build infrastructure.

it is not generall a govt's job to fund an industry that supposedly cant survive.if such a service were so essential yet so unprofitable,that govt should socialize it.if an industry is profitable but instead protected and subsidized,then that industry is bound to fail,or simply not grow.

 

[beerftw]

You are assuming the private sector is more efficient. When 75% of business start ups fail within 3 years, that doesn't bode well for arguing that the private sector is more efficient. But alas I am not saying government is better at it, just that it is better at getting money to areas that need it more.

private sector is bar far more efficient,govt supported industries dont fail 75% of the time because they are protected from failure,but the loss of inevitable failure leads to lack of competition.if the govt wanted to ensure the success of these startup companies,they would work harder to ensure loans that were affordable and maybe even short term no tax periods for new business,rather than subsidizing failure or preventing more successful companies from competing.

 

[PirateMk1]

Every single powerful industry was the beneficiary of help from the government: railroads (free land and free chinese labor), airplanes (army paying for most advancements, even hiring Wright brothers), automobiles (with creation of roads, highways etc.), computers (internet technology), aerospace technology, green technology, oil (highly subsidized).

To deny that the US has benefited from this is like denying you need oxygen to breathe.

Computers were huge BEFORE the internet got big. Microsoft and Apple both were fairly large companies before the internet started getting big. Oil is not highly subsidized. The government makes a boatloads of cash off oil industry the government makes more than the oil campanies do.

 

[JWhite]

"The issue is do protectionists policies help or harm a nation that follows them. The answer is, it depends. Nations attempting to kick start new industries are usually benefited from some protectionism.

So your market evangelist religious doctrine has been proved false again."

Head of Joaquin - I am not sure your bludgeoning technique for arguments is effective. You should read Henry Hazlitts "The Seen and the Unseen". Sure if a country wants to prop up a fledgling industry then protectionist policies may be needed. This argument doesn't negate BeerFTWs point about freezing out growth. Consider that for protectionism to be relevant to the industry it must be less efficient then the foriegn competitors or it wouldn't require protection in the first place. If you read Riccardo's law of comparative Advantage you would see that it doesn't benefit a country to produce something less effeciently then to just trade for the item with a country that is more efficeint based on an opportunity cost analysis. Free trade is the clear choice for growth and a more efficient use of the world's capital. Protectionism is only good for those who are protected but it does not come without a price. The rest of that country is forced to pay more for the goods coming from the protected sector so the society as a whole is hurt by the protectionism.

 

[CaptinSarcastic]

Although this kid looks like he's about 12, he's correct. Milton Friedman had the best example of this with a pencil:



When you're at the store shopping for a pencil, you look at quality, and price. When quality is equal, you go for the cheapest. When you buy the cheaper, same quality product, you're telling the other pencil producer that they need to somehow optimize their pencil making process to meet or exceed their competitors.

When the government comes in, and say, uses price control to protect the US pencil market by setting a mandatory $1 per pencil floor, many people who wanted pencils may forgo it for use of a pen, a marker, or simply fewer pencils. This leaves more pencils on the shelf, less pencils in the hands of consumers, and less money in the pockets of pencil makers.

The information communicated through the free market is vital to all business worldwide, and is the fundamental basis of capitalism.

This very good, and quite accurate, with one glaring problem, the notion of a "free market". It is a myth, a unicorn, Big Foot, the Loch Ness monster. It does not exist.

The market itself is a fiction, a construct, designed by the people with capital to maximize that capital. Where the vast majority of money trades hands, the market is competely manipulated, co-opted, captured if you will.

So yes, you describe how things work in a free market, so whenever you run into a free market, you can apply this reasoning to it.

Until then, you may as well be describing the horn on a unicorn.

 

[RabidAlpaca]

This very good, and quite accurate, with one glaring problem, the notion of a "free market". It is a myth, a unicorn, Big Foot, the Loch Ness monster. It does not exist.

The market itself is a fiction, a construct, designed by the people with capital to maximize that capital. Where the vast majority of money trades hands, the market is competely manipulated, co-opted, captured if you will.

So yes, you describe how things work in a free market, so whenever you run into a free market, you can apply this reasoning to it.

Until then, you may as well be describing the horn on a unicorn.

Lol, "Everything is an illusion, nobody chooses what they want to buy, so the government should manipulate every single portion of an economy."

What kind of BS is this? Of course there's a free market. Any bit of freedom not in the market is inherently taken by the government.

You get paid for doing your job, which you do voluntarily, and then you can spend that money however you choose, on whatever you choose. Or did somebody put a gun to your head to make you buy a specific brand of pencil in the scenario I presented?

Let's look at the dictionary definition:

free market

— n
a. an economic system that allows supply and demand to regulate prices, wages, etc, rather than government policy

99% of prices and wages in our economy are determined by supply and demand, and not by a bureacrat. If you'd like to prove otherwise, have at it haas.

 

[austrianecon]

Lol, "Everything is an illusion, nobody chooses what they want to buy, so the government should manipulate every single portion of an economy."

What kind of BS is this? Of course there's a free market. Any bit of freedom not in the market is inherently taken by the government.

You get paid for doing your job, which you do voluntarily, and then you can spend that money however you choose, on whatever you choose. Or did somebody put a gun to your head to make you buy a specific brand of pencil in the scenario I presented?

Let's look at the dictionary definition:

free market

— n
a. an economic system that allows supply and demand to regulate prices, wages, etc, rather than government policy

99% of prices and wages in our economy are determined by supply and demand, and not by a bureacrat. If you'd like to prove otherwise, have at it haas.

And by that very definition there is no free market. I can prove this by 2 simple points.

1) Banking. The Fed sets interest rates. This effect prices, supply and demand and is done by bureaucrats.

2) Minimum wage. There is a flat bottom wage employers must pay. So prices for production are artificially set since wages play a role in the cost of production.

 

[RabidAlpaca]

And by that very definition there is no free market. I can prove this by 2 simple points.

1) Banking. The Fed sets interest rates. This effect prices, supply and demand and is done by bureaucrats.

2) Minimum wage. There is a flat bottom wage employers must pay. So prices for production are artificially set since wages play a role in the cost of production.

No one is claiming that we have anything even remotely close to a 100% pure free market, but it's more free market than not. Most people's salaries are not changed by minimum wage laws, and the fed changing the value of our money as a whole doesn't normally change prices of individual products, but rather, increases prices of everything.

Trust me, we're on the same page that it shouldn't be this way, but CaptainSarcastic's point was that my analogy explaining why government intervention ultimately hurts the economy was completely wrong.

Read post #3 of this thread. Do you disagree?

 

[CaptinSarcastic]

Lol, "Everything is an illusion, nobody chooses what they want to buy, so the government should manipulate every single portion of an economy."

What kind of BS is this? Of course there's a free market. Any bit of freedom not in the market is inherently taken by the government.

You get paid for doing your job, which you do voluntarily, and then you can spend that money however you choose, on whatever you choose. Or did somebody put a gun to your head to make you buy a specific brand of pencil in the scenario I presented?

Let's look at the dictionary definition:

free market

— n
a. an economic system that allows supply and demand to regulate prices, wages, etc, rather than government policy

99% of prices and wages in our economy are determined by supply and demand, and not by a bureacrat. If you'd like to prove otherwise, have at it haas.

The defintion is an accurate description of a free market, but we do not have a free market in this country.

99% of prices and wages are absolutely NOT determined by supply and demand.

I don't expect you to take my word for it, but here's a couple of Nobel Prize winning economists, you can take up your argument with them:


Columbia University Professor Edmund S. Phelps, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in economics, and his coauthor, Saifedean Ammous, assistant professor of economics at the Lebanese American University, write that the U.S. economy ceased to be a free market some time ago, yet the free market is blamed for the economic crisis. (The real question is whether the American economy was ever really free.)


"The managerial state has assumed responsibility for looking after everything from the incomes of the middle class to the profitability of large corporations to industrial advancement. This system . . . is . . . an economic order that harks back to Bismarck in the late nineteenth century and Mussolini in the twentieth: corporatism."


"dysfunctional corporations that survive despite their gross inability to serve their customers; sclerotic economies with slow output growth, a dearth of engaging work, scant opportunities for young people; governments bankrupted by their efforts to palliate these problems; and increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of those connected enough to be on the right side of the corporatist deal."

Freedom in the market exists between you and the kids that mow your lawn, after that, pretty much everything else is manipulated in some way.


Read more: Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

 

[JP Hochbaum]

Pure free markets will never exist, and never should exist. Letting the market dictate everything is allowing the exploitation of labor and the large growth of capital that we see now.

 

[beerftw]

Pure free markets will never exist, and never should exist. Letting the market dictate everything is allowing the exploitation of labor and the large growth of capital that we see now.

you are correct in that they never,existed,but wrong on never should exist.

most of our problems are due to protection of industries and profits.have you ever noticed the massive income inequality occured not under reagans tax cuts,but occurred under nixon,right after the gold standard ended.then one has to think how does that make them richer???with all the print and spend economics,corporate bailouts no bid contracts andmany other subsidies or guaranteed forms of income for corporations have fueled the incomes of the rich.there is also an alternate theory that the rich are hoarding money not to be richer,but simply to control inflation,to ensure their money holds value.


but under the free market argument itself,the most free market the world has ever been has been post ww2,the same time worldwide protectionism was ditched for the most part.prior to ww2,even under capitalism,most countries were more mercantil than anything,yet the world today has more people fed,more people living decent lives,and more third world countries rise above poverty than any time in the worlds history under the semi adoption of free market.while the older economies of the world who denounce free market have nothing to show but robber barons,mass poor and even prior feudalism,none of the examples of protected economies have ever shown to be promising in anything but theory,basically people long for a eutopia that never existed,but denounce the closest example available.

 

[JP Hochbaum]

you are correct in that they never,existed,but wrong on never should exist.

most of our problems are due to protection of industries and profits.have you ever noticed the massive income inequality occured not under reagans tax cuts,but occurred under nixon,right after the gold standard ended.

After Nixon we experienced stagflation from an oil crisis, not leaving the gold standard. Rising oil costs will effect the lower sectors of the economy the most so it makes sense inequality started to rear it's ugly head during that time.

Then when Nixon took over he cut taxes on the rich and raised them on the poor and middle class. That further exasperated the problem.

"
In 1982, The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year, and the Highway Revenue Act raised the gasoline tax by $3.3 billion.

In 1983, Reagan signed off on legislation to raise payroll taxes and tax Social Security benefits for some higher earners.

In 1984, the Deficit Reduction Act included increases in taxes on estates and distilled spirits and ended some business tax breaks, to the tune of $18 billion per year.

In 1985, Reagan signed legislation making permanent a 16-cent federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes, then worth about $2.4 billion a year.

In 1986, the Tax Reform Act lowered the top income tax bracket from 50 percent to 28 percent. To pay for the reductions, however, the legislation closed a number of tax loopholes.

In 1987, Reagan signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act that extended the telephone excise tax and eliminated a real estate tax deduction loophole."

" "Average weekly earnings of nonsupervisory workers, total private industry, 1982 dollars4

1965 $290
1970 297
1973 315 (Peak)
1975 292
1976 297
1977 299
1978 301
1979 291
1980 274
1981 271
1982 267
1983 272
1984 274
1985 271
1986 271
1987 269
1988 266
1989 263"

Sorry I can't provide a link they are from my desktop and never saved the link but I could probably find it if needed.

 

[JP Hochbaum]

Found the link, and I meant Reagan not Nixon my second sentence:


Income and Wealth Inequality

 

[beerftw]

After Nixon we experienced stagflation from an oil crisis, not leaving the gold standard. Rising oil costs will effect the lower sectors of the economy the most so it makes sense inequality started to rear it's ugly head during that time.

Then when Nixon took over he cut taxes on the rich and raised them on the poor and middle class. That further exasperated the problem.

"
In 1982, The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year, and the Highway Revenue Act raised the gasoline tax by $3.3 billion.

In 1983, Reagan signed off on legislation to raise payroll taxes and tax Social Security benefits for some higher earners.

In 1984, the Deficit Reduction Act included increases in taxes on estates and distilled spirits and ended some business tax breaks, to the tune of $18 billion per year.

In 1985, Reagan signed legislation making permanent a 16-cent federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes, then worth about $2.4 billion a year.

In 1986, the Tax Reform Act lowered the top income tax bracket from 50 percent to 28 percent. To pay for the reductions, however, the legislation closed a number of tax loopholes.

In 1987, Reagan signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act that extended the telephone excise tax and eliminated a real estate tax deduction loophole."

" "Average weekly earnings of nonsupervisory workers, total private industry, 1982 dollars4

1965 $290
1970 297
1973 315 (Peak)
1975 292
1976 297
1977 299
1978 301
1979 291
1980 274
1981 271
1982 267
1983 272
1984 274
1985 271
1986 271
1987 269
1988 266
1989 263"

Sorry I can't provide a link they are from my desktop and never saved the link but I could probably find it if needed.

i never denied stagflation caused by oil companies,i simply pointed out the beneficiaries of print and spend economics have been the wealthy,either as means to control inflation or simply because they have better connections to the govt.