Friday, October 14, 2011
You can't have political freedom without economic freedom...
I don't much care for political analysis conveyed as propaganda via youtube video, with flashy imagery, eerie background music, sombre voiceovers (usually substituting for reasoned thought and argument), but this one happens to confirm my bias.
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I notice Canada started to decline around the same time that the U.S.A. did. Is there a connection? Why has the U.S.A. declined faster?
ReplyDeleteoh please
ReplyDeletethis is more like wallstreet disinformation, lies, pcyhological warfare
corporations exploit the working classes, that is economic freedom?
HM
Good question about Canada's decline. It's hard to tell but it seems to coincide with 9/11. It was the terrible policies of Bush and Obama that led to the massive decline: huge deficits were mostly Bush's fault; bank bail outs; automaker bail outs; Obama passed a couple of doozies himself and the budget projections are pretty bad. My guess is that Canada is more restrained in bad policy making. Our deficit is nowhere what they have.
ReplyDeleteANON 9:33 ...good argument: "it's all lies"... hilarious. That's a nice way to dismiss something that you disagree with, isn't it?
"Wall street disinformation?" lol. Theories of economic and political freedom predate Wall street, and are written by far better people than fascist crack-pot trolls like yourself Anon.
ReplyDeleteIt's staggering to see how much regulations cost.
ReplyDeleteNow, I'm no fan of companies making huge profits either (as HM@933 seems to suggest) however US Corporate profits in 2010 were 1.659T - very close to the cost of the regulations (1.75T). (NYTimes, 2010)
Not counting debt, would you consider this greedy? If regulations are costing too much at 1.75T, maybe profits are too high at 1.659T?
Those profits could hire the same 43M people.
I'm no economist, but that seems to be part of this issue, no? Maybe you disagree, I'm just trying to look at every aspect.
HM: "oh please
this is more like wallstreet disinformation, lies, pcyhological warfare "
I'd be interested in hearing your reasons, I don't like 'greedy' companies either, but you have to argue in a semi-reasonable matter if you want to get your point across. PS you spelt psy. wrong.
-TG
TG - Businesses have to feel that it's a good idea to expand, and hire more people. Some people argue that the problem is that businesses don't feel confident to do this in the current economic climate. Regulations don't help there; nor do expectations of higher taxes in the future. Obama's healthcare bill, licencing etc.. also provides barriers to hiring. Finally, a lot of people who were out of work in housing/construction are going to need to find something else to do b/c they were employed on a housing bubble that was not sustainable. That's the worst thing about government intervention, it affects prices, which signal to people where to go to work or get training. So people responded to that in the housing sector, but the price signals were false. Now you have a whole sector of the economy in shambles. Anyway, hard to see how you can do much about that through policy.
ReplyDeleteAs a side note:
Keynesians argue the reason is low 'aggregate demand', in other words, people aren't spending. So there government has more of a role to 'stimulate' things. I don't agree with that argument, though.
Also, business profits don't go into the void. They go places: either investment/savings; consumption; or charity. So it's not as if it sits in a mattress in rich poeples houses. Profit is a good thing. that's what makes businesses want to expand.
ReplyDeleteUgh TG... So companies should use their profits to simply hire people, needed or not? That wouldn't leave very much for re-investment and shareholder dividends. Did you forget the premise of this blog, namely economic freedom is necessary for political freedom? If corporations were mandated by the government to spend their profits as the government social planners see fit, does this not undermine economic and political freedom?
ReplyDeleteAlso, you left us begging the question, how much profit is "too much" and what is "being too greedy mean"?
TG:
ReplyDeleteRegulatory compliance is a cost of doing business. It's one of the things that people think about when seeking to start a business, hire people, or expand. They have to spend money to ensure that they comply with a law of some sort. Nothing productive comes out of that and it's a barrier to commerce.
Profit is a good thing. Businesses should be profitable. PRofit means that your product is good, and that your business model is working. It's your reward. Promise of profit is what drives people to start businesses in the first place. And usually, it goes somewhere that helps out the economy (ie. it doesn't sit in a mattress).
Regulatory compliance is just waste, and it has bad side effects.
Well I got the responses I was shooting for, that's for sure!
ReplyDeleteI do agree that profit isn't bad/greedy - to
suggest otherwise is to dream...
I will suggest that, in reply to the video which states that the costs of regulation would hire 43M people, that these companies would not choose to hire those people with that extra money, just as you suggest they wouldn't hire those extra people with their profits.
Maybe they would just take that extra money as profit? In fact, no regulation would encourage other businesses to start up, lowering their profits further, forcing them to perhaps lower their hiring in lieu of making less money.
You are all obviously very well versed in economic theory, where I have non, so try and bear with me.
That's true, it might just go to profit. But that's not entirely a bad thing. At least it wouldn't be wasted.
ReplyDeleteGood point about competition and regulation. Regulatory compliance is easier for large companies, and so it's kind of anticompetitive. Businesses that are good at it probably have an advantage over newbies.