gdp's Comments

Ludwig von Mises Institute : How Macroeconomic Data Encourages Government Intervention - Frank Shostak - Mises Daily

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 00:51:31 +0000

I do not understand what you mean by the phrase: "and does not recognize the individuals" What are you trying to imply by the term "recognize"? It seems like there is more loaded into this language than what first meets the eye. Example: the local butcher is in the business of producing meat products. I have dollars that I have earned from voluntarily rendering services to my boss. I offer to trade the butcher the product of my work (my dollars) for the product of his work (his meat). I am better off and he is better off. So who should be 'recognizing' who in this situation? If I 'recognize' him, shouldn't he also 'recognize' me equally and we cancel each other out? Are you implying we should have an imbalance of recognition somewhere? How would you go about measuring such things in any meaningful way?

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Nobel Winner Jean Tirole’s Faulty Views on Monopoly - Frank Shostak - Mises Daily

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 18:13:19 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail... Gift for you ;)

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Many Ways the State Taxes the Poor - Julian Adorney - Mises Daily

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 17:45:52 +0000

"But faced between paying 7 percent of his paycheck to Social Security, or investing that 7 percent in learning new skills to build a career, John has to choose the former or go to jail." I actually take issue with this comment. Employees don't pay 7 percent of their paycheck -- they pay the full 12.4%, their share and their employer's share. The 6.2% paid by the employer is a direct cost of hiring increase attached to the employee. If the employer side of the tax were to go away, I suspect that employee wages would increase by approximately 6.2%. That is why the employer side of the tax is actually a hidden tax on the employee. The employee pays 6.2% directly, and his wage 6.2% lower than it otherwise would have been had the tax not been imposed.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Many Ways the State Taxes the Poor - Julian Adorney - Mises Daily

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 17:39:42 +0000

This is more of a pure economics and political theory site, so I am not sure that you will find the answers you need here. For personal finance questions and advice on serious problems, you might actually try: http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Unseen Costs of the Minimum Wage - - Mises Daily

Fri, 5 Sep 2014 21:45:11 +0000

Forgive me for asking additional questions, but I always thought that there would be at least 3 different possibilities after a Minimum Wage hike; but I am not sure exactly which one would actually occur in reality, if one of them is theoretically false and therefore impossible, or if some combination of the possibilities would occur. Imagine Mr. Market (the personification of the collective value scales of thousands of people) has an ordinal list of labor values. ORDINAL VALUE SCALE OF LABOR W/ RESULTANT PRICES Licensed Engineer - $35/hr Licensed Engineering Intern - $25/hr CADD Tech/Drafter - $15/hr Bingo Attendant - $8/hr Then comes the government mandate: "No job shall pay below $15/hr." What do we expect to happen to our value scale? 1 of 3 possibilities. 1. Shift Upwards Licensed Engineer - $40/hr Licensed Engineering Intern - $30/hr CADD Tech/Drafter - $20/hr Bingo Attendant - $15/hr The value scale corrects itself by shifting upwards, thus keeping the relative valuations the same as before. 2. Elimination or Severe Reduction of Job Licensed Engineer - $35/hr Licensed Engineering Intern - $25/hr CADD Tech/Drafter - $15/hr <...> The value scale corrects itself by simply eliminating the corrupted entry, i.e., the Bingo Attendant jobs disappear. 3. False Information Accepted Licensed Engineer - $35/hr Licensed Engineering Intern - $25/hr CADD Tech/Drafter - $15/hr Bingo Attendant - $15/hr People simply accept the new false price data, and therefore misallocation occurs when Bingo Attendant positions steal skilled labor and capital away from other truly valued uses.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Unseen Costs of the Minimum Wage - - Mises Daily

Fri, 5 Sep 2014 15:50:58 +0000

One thing I've always been curious about, but have never seen discussed, is the effect that minimum wage might have on the distribution of skilled labor. The function of prices in a market system is to guide the allocation of resources to their most valued ends. The absolute price of any good or service is not as important as the price in comparison to the prices of other goods and services. It acts as a sort of visible manifestation of our collective value scales. Highly skilled and specialized laborers are drawn to the areas where prices are high, simply because their services there are valued more highly. Low skill workers are funneled into low wage jobs because their skills aren't valued as highly. But if you artifically screw with the distribution of wages and raise the bottom up, isn't that going to funnel skilled workers (who otherwise would have taken high paying, high skill jobs) into low skill jobs instead, thus creating misallocation and inefficiency? For example: Bob is looking for a career path. One option is Computer Aided Design and Drafting (CADD). Technical Drafters in his area have an average wage of $15/hour after a good deal of schooling and training. Menial labor, fast food, retail and customer service jobs pay much less, say $5.00/hour with little training. But the local government suddenly passes a law stating: "No job may pay under $15/hour." Now the only way for those low skill employers to stay in business is to phase out their low productivity workers and hire fewer workers back, but make the few they do hire the most skilled and productive possible, meaning that all these previously low skill businesses are now targeting Bob and are competing against the CADD employers for his services. What effect does this have on the CADD employers or other businesses who already pay wages close to the new Minimum Wage?

Ludwig von Mises Institute : A Lesson in Economic Analysis from the Minimum Wage Debate - Ken Zahringer - Mises Daily

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 17:33:01 +0000

The point is that the argument tells us nothing of causation. The ad established no link whatsoever between rises in employment and minimum wage, because it never bothered to factor out other variables. It is like saying: "I woke up this morning and my head hurt. I also got a new pair of shoes yesterday. Therefore, the new shoes caused my headache." Also consider: I have a choice to invest $5000 in either company A or B. I decide to invest it all in B. I make a $2000 return on investment. On its own it looks like a good result. But through my alternate timeline viewing machine I see that had I invested in company A instead, I would have made a $20,000 return. So only looking at B, it appears that I made a good decision. I made a positive return on investment and my assets grew. But looking at the whole picture, including the alternative that was given up for the sake of B, I see that I actually LOST $18,000 that I otherwise would have made. My decision was actually a poor one. As per Minimum Wage: a State that raises their minimum wage dramatically might see an increase in employment of 10%. On its own that looks good. But had they not raised the minimum wage at all their gain in employment might have been 12%, holding all other things equal. So in reality their gain is actually a LOSS, because they gained less jobs than they otherwise would have gained had they not gone through with their decision. The important point being that there are myriads of other factors out there all simultaneously affecting the job market, and they might all be positive, but Minimum Wage as a single factor is still a net negative, and we would have that many more jobs without it on top of the gains from the other variables.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Why Isn’t Monetary Pumping Helping the Economy? - Frank Shostak - Mises Daily

Mon, 25 Aug 2014 17:31:44 +0000

"There is, however, no independent category such as demand that drives an economy. Every demand must be funded by a previous production of wealth. By producing something useful to other individuals, an individual can exercise a demand for other useful goods." Can I just say that I love this quote? It is a very simple, succinct response to both "demand siders" and "supply siders" both.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Six Myths About Money and Inflation - Patrick Barron - Mises Daily

Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:00:41 +0000

The biggest myth I see perpetuated in the media is: "Aggregate prices are not rising quickly at all. That means there is no serious inflation happening" (*cough Krugman *cough*) Truth: price inflation due to monetary expansion is uneven and often concentrated only in certain areas (bubbles), making aggregate measurements not very useful. Price Inflation happens nearest the injection point of the new money into the economy (currently the Stock Market), and ripples outward only slowly over time ala Cantillon.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : When High Taxes Lead to Revolution - Peter St. Onge - Mises Daily

Thu, 31 Jul 2014 17:35:44 +0000

As was mentioned, the biggest caveat is the fact that thousands of years ago, the only way taxes were collected was by local thugs going around from house to house and directly taking goods and money. Even the least bright of the common people could see exactly what was being taken from them. That is what made a unified rebellion more likely. But Governments have gotten much smarter about stealing in the last few hundred years, and people (unfortunately) remain dumb and naive. Just try to explain to somebody today that they are actually paying ALL 12.4% of the Social Security tax themselves (because the employer simply deducts his share from base wages), and they will probably stare at you blankly like a deer in the headlights. Try to explain to them that inflation is also a tax (the government is borrowing against the value of our money), and again: deer in the headlights. As long as government can keep convincing people that they aren't paying any tax when clearly they are, or that somebody else is going to pay the tax for them, then there probably won't be any rebellion.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Problem with Right-to-Work Laws - Logan Albright - Mises Daily

Fri, 18 Jul 2014 17:33:09 +0000

I must respectfully disagree with this article. Right to Work proposals are not so much an extension of Government power as they are an extension of Just Law. We just had an article recently discussing the difference between legislation and law did we not? So long as Right to Work laws are protecting property rights, then I have no problem with it. That is what Law should do -- that is its function. Now if some portion of those Right to Work laws violate property rights and Libertarian principles, then I will criticize that portion of course. I think the author should be careful about what exactly he is seeking to abolish. If in his quest to abolish all Government he also drags good Law down with it instead of separating it out, then he is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Employer-Provided Health Care Is Not a Religious Issue - Ryan McMaken - Mises Daily

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 17:43:24 +0000

Well, I can sympathize in a way with modern conservatives. They have to resort to arguments of religion and tradition because that is all they know. Their intellectual leaders don't teach them anything else. And so they consistently lose the argument every single time because they always abandon the high ground. The modern liberals aren't challenged hard on diverting the issues to religion because that is what many conservatives WANT. This slow philosophical slide into hell has been going on for many many decades. Like Ayn Rand or not, she hit the nail squarely on the head when she blasted the conservative sellout of capitalism clear back in the 60's. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpp5EXZZrgA

Ludwig von Mises Institute : How To Have Law Without Legislation - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily

Sat, 5 Jul 2014 17:32:56 +0000

I always preferred the quote of Socrates when trying to define Just Law: "Are suits decided on any other ground, but that a man may neither take what is another's, nor be deprived of what is his own?" Just Law should deal only with issues of property disputes and the enforcing of reparations for damages caused. And since man is owner of himself and his own body, the Law would naturally extend to protect him from bodily violence and bodily harm from others. When a government goes beyond this principle, it should no longer be considered Law, but rather Legislation. As the article brings out, it is the Legislation that is dangerous and subject to the most abuse, because it is arbitrary, devoid of principle and subject to the whim of the ruling elite.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : What Libertarians Should Learn From The Abolitionists - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily

Sun, 25 May 2014 01:23:11 +0000

And how about that? We just got a wonderful new blog post discussing this very issue. Perhaps Mr. Levit should go read it and get back to us: http://bastiat.mises.org/2014/05/memorial-day-and...

Ludwig von Mises Institute : What Libertarians Should Learn From The Abolitionists - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily

Sat, 24 May 2014 23:56:56 +0000

You are still way off the rails. I did not say that Total Liberty is "freedom from the State." I said that total liberty is: "the absence of physical coercion" I take issue with the State not because it is the State as such, but only because it employs the use of force and coercion for political means. If the State renounced the initiation of force and stuck only to protection of property rights (in the sense of a Night Watchman), then I would have no problem with it. In that sense, total liberty can indeed exist. It does not in any way exclude cooperation with other individuals. It does not forbid charity. It does not prevent one from looking inside himself in meditation. The only thing liberty does is offer protection from the initiation of violence. That is it.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : What Libertarians Should Learn From The Abolitionists - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily

Sat, 24 May 2014 23:08:16 +0000

"Let us say that total liberty is the option to utilize one's God-given gifts, talents, and abilities to the maximum." You flew off the rails at this sentence. If you do not begin with a solid and well grounded definition, then everything that follows will likely be invalid as well. I typically prefer Rand's definition: "Freedom [which I view as synonymous with Liberty], in a political context, has only one meaning: the absence of physical coercion... It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state—and nothing else."

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Anarcho-Capitalists Against Ayn Rand - David Gordon - Mises Daily

Fri, 16 May 2014 19:58:41 +0000

"There is no justification to the initiation of force, ever" There is certainly justification for the use of force in defense of person or property against violence. This is a preventative stage. Both anarchists and minarchists agree on this principle. There is also justification for the RETALIATORY use of force with the aim of extracting reparations for damages already caused if preventative steps have failed. The only caveat is that the payment demanded must be proportional to the damage caused, even extending to a demand of life for life ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_(law... ). We normally call this principle "Justice." I believe this second stage is what the anarchists like JFF have the most trouble with, because their system would have no concrete guarantee of Justice. It would have no mechanism for actually carrying it out. The only possible method of dispensing Justice is through use of force, because that is what it is by definition: force in response to force. But anarchists reject all of this. They are so averse to and terrified of anything to do with "Force" that they would rather watch the world burn than lift a finger to stop those doing the burning.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Anarcho-Capitalists Against Ayn Rand - David Gordon - Mises Daily

Fri, 16 May 2014 16:25:00 +0000

"That statement leaves no room for a state, since even the most limited state taxes people"--freeharmonics We aren't talking about the "most limited state" currently existing. We are talking about ideals and what a state SHOULD be. And in the state that Rand specifically describes as ideal, taxes are voluntary. Even your version of pure free market anarchism has never existed for any significant length of time before, and yet you still speak of it do you not? According to the Ayn Rand Lexicon: "In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary. Since the proper services of a government—the police, the armed forces, the law courts—are demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance." ( http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/taxation.html ) "The only way that a state can not violate the law is by not existing."--freeharmonics It depends on what your definition of Law is. If you hold to same definition that Rand held and that I described above (a set of objective rules whose only purpose is to protect individuals from aggression) , then yes it is indeed POSSIBLE for a State to stay within those limits, even though it is UNLIKELY with our current state of world affairs. But then again, the pure free market anarchism that Rothbard described is just as unlikely, if not more so. For if the men of Rand's limited government cannot restrain their lust for power and cannot stay within the limits of an objectively defined set of Just Laws, then those SAME MEN with their same drives for power and same love of aggression would also ruin your system of anarchism. The people themselves do not change between systems. If they can ruin one then they can ruin another. The people have to change and educate themselves FIRST before any system can be effective.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Anarcho-Capitalists Against Ayn Rand - David Gordon - Mises Daily

Fri, 16 May 2014 03:40:59 +0000

While I do agree that Rand's view of foreign intervention (frequently calling for the bombing and destruction of communist and primitive nations) is inconsistent with her own philosophy, I still think that her basic concept of government is correct. Please allow me to respectfully give some of the reasons why I disagree with this article, and in turn perhaps some of the other posters could say why they disagree with me. "the requirements of objective law are fixed by human nature." Rand would agree. "Far from requiring a state, objective law correctly understood precludes its existence." Rand would also agree with this. But accepting that Law precedes the State does not mean that we cannot and should not have some limited form of State. All that it means is that the Law should have primacy over the State, and that the State's only function should be to enforce objectively defined Law. In her own words: "If physical force is to be barred from social relationships, men need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights under an objective code of rules...This is the task of a government—of a proper government—its basic task, its only moral justification and the reason why men do need a government...A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control—i.e., under objectively defined laws." I think what the author gets hung up on is the same issue that Bastiat discussed in his "La Loi (The Law)," namely, that a government can legislate and create many rules and mandates that have nothing to do with actual Law. Rand would agree with the author here that most of the 'legislation' and 'fabrications' that the government makes today are unnecessary and harmful. Real Law only has one overarching principle: "No man may take what belongs to another, nor be deprived of what is his own, except in the case that he should be made to pay reparations for damages caused" Anything that goes beyond this simple principle I think that Rand would consider to be totally outside the scope of a proper, limited government. “There is no need for a legislative process. Law is inherent in the nature of things — including man’s nature. Thus, discovery of law rather than the fabrication of law is called for" Rand would agree with this. I do not see how it contradicts her philosophy. She simply states that once real Law, which is in harmony with man's nature and which serves to protect him from violence, IS discovered, then it must somehow be enforced or else there would be no purpose in 'discovering' it in the first place.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : How Inflation Picks Your Pocket - Daniel J. Sanchez - Mises Daily

Fri, 16 May 2014 00:12:00 +0000

"You are not necessarily gaining on volume" You are not necessarily not gaining on volume either. "Not necessarily" simply speaks of possibility, but lots of things are possible. The word does not, however, speak of PROBABILITY or CAUSATION, which is what your argument would need to be more effective. In that sense, we can say that an increase in the volume of the production of a good tends to CAUSE a reduction in the price of said good, because the increased production decreased the good's scarcity. The profit per good sold goes down but it is made up for in increased volume. All of that is true by definition and not arguable. "but anticipating further falling prices would further the notion not to stock up." Falling prices of goods and services INCREASE the demand for those services, by the Laws of Supply and Demand. The thing to really watch for is on the supply side. When production increases and volume increases and prices drop to the point where profit margins are very very thin, then many businesses on the margin may well drop out or choose to not enter that industry at all. But that is GOOD thing, not a bad thing. The low profitability and low prices are a SIGNAL that we have enough of that good, and that scarce resources should be diverted somewhere more important. "I thought I was fairly clear that some costs are fixed" Of course some costs are fixed. That is obvious. And many of those same costs are also negotiable, as C_T said. And those fixed and long term costs are all simply a part of the entrepreneur being able to ANTICIPATE and NEGOTIATE. The ones who can do both will generally be successful, while the ones who cannot do both will generally fail. Such is life. As Mr. Hulsmann says in the video linked to above (which you should really watch), the entrepreneur who is able to anticipate his future costs and future price changes, will be able to negotiate possibly lower prices based on that anticipation. And if the market really is trending towards steadily lower prices, then the seller of the land or fixed capital will be pressured into accepting lower long term offers. Unless of course, an entrepreneur comes along and is willing to accept higher long term costs because he ANTICIPATES his profits will remain high enough to cover them. That is also a good thing, because investing in high profit yielding ventures means that more highly valued consumer wants are being satisfied. And everyone still wins. "Because some costs don't fall in equivocation to others you could easily be pushed out of business." And a meteor could also randomly fall out of the sky and destroy your business in the blink of an eye. So what? Lots of bad things CAN happen. Some businesses fail, and then the capital and resources that went into that failed business are picked up by another newer business, put to new uses and life continues on. "If you guys don't see this sorry,but you don't work in the real world." I do not think your feet have set foot in the real world since you started posting.