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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (20362)	3/1/2002 3:52:05 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I agree. But until FL decides otherwise perhaps we can keep this going for one or two more posts. So if FL thinks that something is OT he just asks to move it somewhere else rather then getting mad and/or suspending people quickly? I was also thinking about the possibility that other people might be annoyed by the off topic. Of course no one has complained yet... Now those large agribusiness types have now displaced two sets of family farmers, Mexican and US Midwesterners. Alot more farmers then that have been displaced. The majority of Americans (and presumably Mexicans) used to be farmers. Now what is it 1%? Those farmers and/or their decendents generally did better as factory or office or service workers then as farmers and in the meant time we feed larger sections of the world. All of those workers now produce plenty of good and services. The real cost of food is lower and with all the production produced by the 60% or so of the population that would have been producing just food (and a few household goods for themselves) out society became much wealthier. Maybe the rich were helped more then the poor, but the poor are much better off now as well. Would you rather be in the bottom 20% now or in the bottow 20% in 1870? I see nothing wrong with a more humane process, one in which the rich don't get richer and the poor poorer but one in which some of those riches go to those who just got poorer. That could mean a process by which those large corporations don't get quite the profits they hoped. I don't see a problem with that. I do see a problem with that. Any process of figureing out and forcing compensation will be a mess even if it isn't "taken to another planet". And anything that increases the money and time required to change things in our economy makes our economy less dynamic. In some European countries they make it harder to fire people. So does that increase employment? No. Employment is decreased because employers are more reluctant to hire if they might be stuck with the employee. And while we don't generally make it difficult to fire people in the US I wouldn't call the difference between the US and Europe takeing things "to another planet". Corporations are not sure of makeing a profit. Compensation might move things from making a good profit to not making enough of a profit to justify the investment or even to makeing a loss. Even if the compensation is only an isignificant part of the profits the delay in setting things up and possible lawsuits if people think it isn't enough would gum up the works. Also if compensation is so small it probably wont be much help to the people who are harmed by the change. Would you require compensation for just relocations or would layoffs, or cut backs in benefits require compensation? If freer trade meant a factory went out of business would the foreign company that took over the business have to compensate the workers who lost their jobs? I think it is a very slippery slope, once you accept the idea that people are owed compensation when economic changes profit some and hurt others its hard to draw the line. This slippery slope gets steeper all the time. Just because corporate execs have to cut down on their gains a bit to make the process more humane (I know I'm repeating myself), the world will stop?? If you don't push the idea to the limit the world wont stop but changes in it will slow down and become more expensive. Yes the economy and productivity will still grow but at a lower rate then before. The gains are what invites investment and the investment results in growth. If the gains are reduce the incentive to take big risk to make the gains will be reduced. I take it you are against minimum wage laws. Because they discourage change? Lead to more economic stagnation? If the minimum wage is set low enough it has little effect for good or ill. Most people would make more then that anyway. If you raise the minimum wage you start pricing out the most marignal employees. You might help the next level of employees right above them (the few who get a raise because of the minimum wage hike) and you hurt the people above them a bit (higher prices result in a slightly lower real income for the middle class and the rich, but the rich won't really notice it). So overall more people get hurt them helped from a sufficently high minimum wage and those that are hurt the most are the poorest workers. (The people who can't get a job at all aren't hurt quite as much because they have no job to lose, but if they depend on a welfare payment and prices go up they probably get hurt). Tim

To: JohnM who wrote (20362)	3/1/2002 3:58:52 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I see nothing wrong with a more humane process, one in which the rich don't get richer and the poor poorer Sorry, John. Sounds good, but the methods that try to bring that about produce nothing but misery.

To: JohnM who wrote (20362)	3/1/2002 5:55:36 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I just looked at the BLS statistics website, to try to determine the percentage of Americans employed in agriculture. I thought it was around 3%, which is astonishing. But it appears that it's now less than 1%, even more astonishing. bls.gov Lots of occupations are gone. I could be nasty and point out the astonishing decline in buggy whip manufacturers, but I understand your point. I used to work in photolithography. When I started, one of my first employers was 70 years old, and had a crew of old-timers who used to be whizzes at what they called hand-separating colors. You may have read that colored photos in magazines are printed using four colors - magenta, cyan, yellow, and black. Printing presses use a set of four negatives to print photos in magazines, and when superimposed the inks approximate all the colors of the rainbow. In the old days of letterpress, every color had to be printed individually. Then they figured out how to do the four color process using photolithography. Well, these old guys could separate colors for letterpress. That's how long they had been in the business. In the meantime, they had learned to separate the colors for four color process. But when I started, everyone was using electronic devices for separating the colors. This was in 1975. I shot one of the really big cameras, the ones that needs a room eighteen feet long to use. The old guys worked at night, preparing metal cuts for ads in newspapers. Then newspapers got rid of metal cuts. Everything was done using negatives, which was fine by me because I shot negatives. But then computers started coming in. I saw the writing on the wall and went to law school. Good thing, too. Similar thing happened to my mother. She used to set metal type on a Linotype. Then she used an electronic device that set type on photo paper. Now it's done on computers, and she's in sales. Nobody in their right mind would want to go back to metal type.