Switzerland and "Star Trek" economics: $2,800 a month for everyone?

Poverty != subsistence. A person can be extremely poor by today's Western standards and yet live way ahead of mere subsistence. At the same time, a person in today's society can have a lot more contextual comforts than a poor 12th century peasants and yet be much closer to subsistence than the peasant ever was.

...other countries with different political and economic systems.

Perhaps so, but that invalidates the prima facie evidence. The freer markets are not, as a general rule, the most prosperous. That doesn't prove that free markets don't lead to prosperity, but it means you can't prove it by pointing to the freest existing markets.

I really don't know. I do know that a poor Chinese person today is way, way worse off than the poorest 30 years ago. At the same time, the rich are massively more rich. I don't know what the theoretical average is, but I'm not sure it's important.

Marx predicted that tensions between workers and owners in the capitalist world would result in a revolution of the workers and the establishment of a socialist state.[/quote]Uhm, yeah. Clearly, this has happened several times. He also predicted that it would only stick when it was a world-wide revolution, and that a world-wide revolution would only happen once the whole world was fully industrialized.

You don't read that and recognize precisely all the hijacked "Four legs good, two legs better" revolutions of the 20th century?

Subsistence = minimum required to survive. Very few people in Western economies are anywhere near the minimum.

If "contextual comforts" don't matter, you could say a person with a big house and two new cars is subsisting if they're only a few missed paychecks away from losing them.

There isn't much difference in economic systems in the West. It's all mainly capitalist, but there are places with more or less state intervention. And the places with more state intervention are the ones with the biggest problems.

An exception doesn't disprove the general rule. And to the extent Russia qualifies as a free market economy, it's not been for very long and it still has the huge disadvantage imparted from years of socialism.

Really? We're going to debate "are the Chinese better off today than decades ago?" Fifty years ago, they were having MILLIONS of people die from famines. Now, their big problem is air pollution from all the new cars people are buying. The Chinese Communist Party--who now pursue policies almost entirely contrary to their name--retain political power mainly BECAUSE economic conditions continue to improve.

The revolutions DIDN'T happen in the capitalist world. They happened in the backward, un-industrialized parts of the world. And the revolutions didn't spread to the capitalist world, the socialist regimes were overturned because citizens of those countries could SEE the growing disparity between the living conditions of those under socialism and those practicing capitalism.

And, in any event, NOW the whole world is pretty much industrialized. Do we see tensions rising to revolutionary levels anywhere. Not really... Does communism seem any more likely in the world now than it did 50 years ago? Not from my perspective. It seems like communism's prospects are much, much bleaker.

There are a few quasi-throwbacks (Venezuela, Zimbabwe) which pretty much demonstrate the economic disorder socialism creates. There's Cuba, slowly shedding its revolutionary ideals. And then there's the sad holdout North Korea, which continues to protect its people from the perils of capitalism by starving them and keeping them from contact with the rest of humanity.

All the collectivist revolutions of the 20th Century produced the same result: horrors and misery. All of them were reactions to capitalism, all of them claimed to be a more just social order. And all of them have, in any reasonable human terms, failed.

Demonstrably untrue. That's almost the reverse of the truth. You'll offer other excuses, of course. But do it up-front.

Here's the Heritage Foundation's map showing economic freedom for countries around the world (green = more free, red = less free).

Find me a red or orange country on the map that you would choose to live in, ideally one that I won't be able to immediately identify large social/economic/political problems.

The Heritage Foundation are a propaganda outfit, and economic freedom is not what you were talking about.

Here is the link listing government spending/taxation as a percentage of GDP, which gives a good measure of state involvement in the economy. Advanced economies are mostly near the top, basket cases near the bottom.

I don't accept spending as a fraction of GDP as a proxy for economic freedom and YES, economic freedom is EXACTLY what we were talking about.

You were talking about state intervention. You may consider this to be the same subject, but it obviously isn't given the statistics - so you're moving the goalposts now.

Not moving anything.

State intervention and economic freedom are, by definition, opposing elements. You cannot increase one without decreasing the other.

As for your proxy (spending/GDP), do you REALLY believe that Russia and Australia are about the same in terms of economic freedom/state intervention? Or that Libya and the U.S. are?

conversely America has a disparity of wealth far beyond any of it's peers in economic freedom.





However, you're still number one in the industrialized world when it comes to children living in poverty.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

Buy f

Buy chest freezer...pay Flow for 1/4 of grass fed cow... That pays us to deliver to you in Seattle....trip is now tax write off.

Those countries may well intervene in the economy in different ways, but to similar extents. Hence why this isn't anything to do with freedom.

You're reaching.

Measure by percentage of GDP says NOTHING about how decisions are made, goods are allocated, etc. It only tells what portion of economic output is consumed by the state.

Let's look at BOTH ends of the table you linked to in order to show just how ridiculous the idea is.

Burma and Turkmenistan have the lowest spending/%GDP with 8.0% and 12.3% respectively. Cuba and Zimbabwe are two of the highest, with 78.1% and 97.8%, respectively. While I would certainly agree that Cuba and Zimbabwe are very, very unfree, am I to gather that Burma and Turkmenistan are laissez-faire utopias?

Absurd.

Agreed. Yet that's what you were originally talking about. Like I said, you moved the goalposts when you started equating low levels of state intervention with the ideologically-loaded concept of "economic freedom".

Haven't I pointed out at least four times now that you're the only one making any claim about freedom? I'm talking about state intervention versus economic development, as per your false statement that "the places with more state intervention are the ones with the biggest problems."

No, it wasn't. I was talking about state intervention. I said ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the portion of output consumed by the state. NOTHING. ZERO. ZIP. Back this up with a quote of mine or quit dragging it out.

A state intervention is, by definition, the opposite of economic freedom. A decision imposed by the government is INESCAPABLY a decision NOT made by someone in the marketplace.

If you want to debate this, give me an example of a state economic intervention with no impact on the marketplace. It's impossible. An intervention that doesn't override the market is an oxymoron.

Rick, you--YOU,YOU,YOU and ONLY YOU,YOU,YOU--injected spending as a proxy for state intervention into this discussion. I have done NOTHING BUT SHOW that this is completely unsuitable.

For the last time, SPENDING is not INTERVENTION, and therefore does not correlate with FREEDOM.

I maintain that intervention is the OPPOSITE of freedom, in that government fiat overrules the decisions of others and have asked you for a counterexample if you challenge this statement.

I showed you the data I use for measuring economic freedom. Regardless of what you think of the Heritage Foundation, their methodology is published and I accept it and am arguing that it is essentially correct. If you wish to take issue with their methodology, let's do it.

Supposedly Milton Friedman, the libertarian economist, came up with the idea of a minimum income as an alternative to having a minimum wage. Oh, and it would not be giving everyone a $2800 check each month as some posters have claimed and instead it would be if you make $2000 then you get a check for an additional $800 so that everyone makes at least a total of $2800 per month. It would be hard to deal with the people who want to free ride but if it resulted in the minimum wage being abolished then it just might be an interesting alternative. I don't see them solving the free rider problem though.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/10/10/swiss-referendum-minimum-income-column/2945657/

The problem with giving everyone $2800 minus their income every month is that there is no motivation to work unless your labor is worth substantially more than $2800.

Which would most people choose:

$3500 from working 160 hours/month
$2800 for working 0 hours/month

Your marginal gain for the 160 hours of labor is $700. That means each hour you work only nets you about $4.50. Would you sell 160 hours of your free time every month for $4.50 if you didn't need to in order to live?

Yes, I believe multiple people have mentioned the free rider problem. I believe I specifically said I think it unlikely they will be able to solve the free rider problem.

I'd take the work knowing that the bottom cost of a roof over one's head in Switzerland just became $2800 a month...still gotta eat after paying the bills.

How is Australia higher on economic freedom than the US despite the apparently catastrophic effect a high minimum wage causes?

It's easy to fix, just phase out payments as income rises rather than strictly cutting them off.

This is obviously wrong, even by libertarian standards. Government intervention to stop market fraud increases economic freedom.

It's from the Heritage Foundation so there is almost never any actual data behind any of it just lots of opinions and vague feelings. Think of claims made by the Heritage Foundation as being even less trustworthy than the claims made by your average politician but with even fewer facts behind it.

Wouldn't that effectively make the defacto minimum income higher than $2800?

I'm assuming you missed the part where I said it was taking it to the extreme and it was in response to your suggestion of raising the minimum wage to absurd inflation causing levels.

You say it couldn't happen, but on smaller scales it already does. Do you think that towns where most smaller shops have been replaced by a Walmart have a better quality of life and economy because of it?

For people who are working, yes.

That's the point, not to try and create some fantastical post-scarcity economy, but to give a safety net right at the bottom end. People are more able to take chances if they know there is something to sv their lives if they fall.

Why wouldn't he?
We've got a guy that likely thinks gulags are bad, but privatized prisons and prison labour are okay.

I'll tell you a personal story. Yes, it's anecdotal, but it is the absolute truth.

I've lived most of my life in California. But there was a period in my teens when I lived in Marshall, a small town in north-central Arkansas. Very small. Population 2000ish and spread out. Not a lot of economic life there: a car dealership, a single grocery store, a few shops, a local shirt factory.

In 2007, I took my mom's ashes back to inter in the family cemetery nearby, and I visited my old town after 23 years away. It seemed like it had gone a little downhill from what I remembered. The old town square, where all the shops are (were), was pretty lifeless, even on a weekend.

I went into the hardware store (when I was 14, I could walk in there and buy shotgun shells, no questions asked!) and there was an old timer sitting at the counter and I chatted with him for a little bit.

What happened to all the business in town, I asked?

"Wal*Mart," he said.

He told me the story. A couple of years prior, Wal*Mart--which is, incidentally, an Arkansas-based company--proposed building a new store in Marshall. This store would draw commerce from all around, Wal*Mart promised, and bring revenues to the town. A group of local merchants, threatened by this giant moving in on their turf, launched a campaign against the plan. Bad for local businesses, they said. Nothing but low wage jobs, they said. And they won. Wal*Mart was unable to get zoning clearance for their store.

So, Wal*Mart built it a few miles south in a town called Clinton, the old timer told me. And what happened? People from all around flock to Clinton to shop at the Wal*Mart. Stuff is cheaper there, and there is a better selection, than the small shops they're closer to. And the people of Marshall? Yep, THEY, TOO, go there to shop. In the long run, Marshall got all the negatives associated with Wal*Mart and passed on the positives.

This old guy says that turning away Wal*Mart was the dumbest thing the town ever did. And I tend to agree with him.

Coincidentally, I visited that very Wal*Mart the same day and bought some snacks, batteries, a few other knick-knacks. I didn't buy anything in Marshall. And, while Marshall is stagnant, Clinton is a growing town that looks to be a pretty nice place to live. I just visited Clinton's website and they seem to be a well-administered community, with all sorts of information on city services available on-line. Marshall doesn't even have a website.

So, do I think towns benefit from a Wal*Mart moving in? On the whole, YES. It's true a few shops probably go under (or are at least challenged), but think about EVERYONE ELSE who benefits. Goods are cheaper and there's a better variety, and people from outlying areas are drawn to spend money there.

So the anecdote proves the point. Walmart pitted the folks of one town against the other, and in the end both towns lose.

Yeah, like Gul said. That just demonstrates an example of how a giant company is able to overpower smaller ones and impose its conditions on people.

Don't worry though, it's the 21st century, no big company would ever try to return to 19th century conditions if they had the chance.

Walmart Tries to Pay Workers in Walmart Vouchers

Not to mention Walmart de Mexico has been involved in a huge amount of corruption and bribery scandals including some of the largest and worst bribery cases ever brought against an American company over seas. It's an extremely corrupt company and not very well run either judging by how their stores always look like crap with empty shelves and not a single employee in sight. To compare, Costco is cheaper (even when you compare its prices to Sam's Club which is Walmart's membership store), Costco pays its workers much better, has more workers, and yet some how Costco still is able to outsell Sam's Club by a wide margin and still make more profits by just about any reasonable standard (sales per store, sales per sq ft of retail space, sales per employee, etc...).

It's pretty telling how Walmart had to reverse course after the founding family (who are billionaires but most of them don't actually work and instead are living off of dad's or granddad's money) declared they'd cut employee hours down to part time status to avoid having to pay for health insurance (something about half of Walmart's competitors already cover for their employees) yet after just a few months they had to flip a 180 and restore tens of thousands of people to full time because it turns out customers complained about lack of service and poor store appearances and simply left for competitor's stores. It turns out even the bottom feeders who shop at Walmart just couldn't be bothered to wait in yet another 30 minute long check out line not when Target and other companies offered no waiting and almost the same prices.

You got THAT out of my story? And the town that got the Wal*Mart didn't lose; it's a nice, growing place.

Wow. An abuse by a Wal*Mart subsidiary in Mexico surely portends the imminent crushing of the proletarians.