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Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sidney Reilly who wrote (6309)	9/17/2007 2:34:07 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13056

The factory workers make more money. They also spend more money. Businesses sell things to the factory workers, or sell things to the people who sell things to the factory workers. Those businesses hire people. Even those who don't get the factory, or retail, or other forms of new jobs can benefit, because people paying for the products retrieved from the garbage have to pay more due to the competition with retail and factory jobs. At the same time all this new revenue and wages create extra tax revenue. Now there are some ways for that fact to be harmful, esp. from a libertarian perspective. But you get that extra revenue without increasing the percentage the government takes, and to the extent its spent on appropriate infrastructure and education the benefits can be widespread. Does every single person benefit? Probably not, almost no change will benefit every single person, esp. when your considering only the short run. But a strong majority of people do. There is disruption, and the disruption can create pain, but its sort of a "no pain, no gain" situation. If you don't allow create destruction, you don't get the creation. You leave people stuck digging through garbage or performing other jobs that are even more odious than the low wage factory jobs.

To: Sidney Reilly who wrote (6309)	9/26/2007 12:13:42 PM
From: Wildstar	Respond to of 13056

Sidney, That's the first time you've made an economic argument, and I appreciate that. However, I think you're way off base. This factory just moved into town. Suppose they employ several hundred people at a high wage compared to garbage pickers. The wages of these workers are now chasing goods in the economy and prices go up accordingly. The remaining garbage pickers and also other nonfactory workers just became more impoverished because of the factory workers wages driving prices up. Now there needs to be more factories to employ the remaining garbage pickers and others because they can't afford what they used to get on their nonfactory wages. For the factory workers it's good but the 100,000 who didn't get a factory job (not just garbage pickers) life gets harder. Realize the ramifications of this argument: every single case of economic growth is bad! When some people get ahead, others by defnition suffer - according to your argument. Yet, we've risen from savages to latte-sippers living in skyscrapers. Economic growth has occurred. Surely, you're not saying that all economic growth is bad, are you?