Balancing FreedomFollow

Read the whole post.

It's a progression. It starts with a reply to Brownduck about why employers would choose not to hire people if the cost to hire was too high, and proceeds to a discussion of the effects of this on the employee.

See. The employer will choose not to hire an employee if it's too expensive. Thus, by increasing the cost of hiring people, we're increasing the rate at which employers will make that choice. Thus, we are creating a condition in which we have better jobs, but fewer of them.


Thus, I presented my question. Would you choose to have a job with no benefits, or no job at all? Because for some number of people, that's the *exact* option they're being presented with. If, as a result of mandating some additional costs on employers for their employees, 10,000 fewer people have jobs at all, then for those 10,000 people, they were forced to take no job because all jobs required a specific minimum "cost".


See how that's relevant? And if you bothered to read the whole post, you'd understand it. It wasn't complicated, and I don't think I used really big words...

Of course it's not for nothing. You take it from people who don't need it. You get it by redistributing wealth so that it is more equal, preferably without violence.

When an employer can't offer employees necessities of life, but still offer a job, then something is wrong with the economic landscape. You eliminate the cause of economic disparity by either peacefully or forcibly bringing it into parity with itself.

But none of this has a damn thing to do with regulations on safety in the workplace. Safety regulations exist to prevent further rapes of labor and individual expense at the hands of the company than has already happened. They won't reverse the rapes which have already happened.

Yes, if YOUR freedom and property rights infringe on someone else's rights.

Except when "someone else's rights" aren't actually rights at all, but benefits which a well crafted indoctrination campaign has convinced you to call "rights".


Benefits are not rights. Can we please at least agree that we're talking about benefits here?

We were talking about rights. You applied the label "rights" to things which are more correctly called "benefits".

Varus was talking about giving up freedom and rights in order to look after someone else's needs. The things being lost are "rights/freedoms". The things we're losing them for are what I'm calling benefits.

Your response was that it's ok if the rights/freedoms are infringing someone else's rights. I took that to mean that you were assuming that the "needs looked after" Varus mentioned were actually rights.



He mentioned the conditions underwhich he felt those rights should not be lost. That's the context of the issue. I took your statement within that context. If you meant something else, then I apologize, but then your statement isn't really a proper response to the OP.

He was very specific that the thing being gained is looking after the needs of others.

No. You declared my statement incorrect because I dismissed a conditional in my response. I pointed out that said dismissed conditional was irrelevant to the point I was making. It was irrelevant when I first dismissed it. It was irrelevant when you made a big stink about it. It is still irrelevant.

In case you've gotten your head turned around somehow, I dismissed the condition that employers would refuse to hire people "when they really needed them" based on the cost of hiring the employee. It has *nothing* to do with my later statements about people preferring to have jobs without benefits than no job at all.




Lol. How on earth can a statement about cause and effect relationships be anything other than opinion? I was not saying something like "80% of people in the US don't have jobs". That's an assertion of fact. I said two relevant things:

1. Employers will hire fewer employees if the cost to hire them is higher. This is clearly an opinion.

2. People would rather have a job without benefits than no job at all. This is also clearly an opinion.


You sir are delusional...



Is that a fact, or an opinion? ;)



Speculation? Where are your facts!? Lol...


Look. I have no clue if it costs more after inflation to hire people today that it used to. I imagine you're probably correct. Um... But doesn't that mean that people are getting a greater total compensation package for the same equivalent work today than back then? I thought that was a good thing?

In any case, whether it's more or less expensive today is utterly irrelevant in terms of whether or not increasing the cost decreases the rate at which employers will hire people. There are factors of long term real economic growth to consider which go beyond issues of inflation.


In the short term though, I still maintain that an increase in the cost to hire employees across the board will result in an overall reduction in the number of hires. Long term trends can be tricky because there are a host of economic factors to consider. Short term trends (which are incredibly important to someone seeking a job) are going to be most influence by short term relative economic changes. Making it cost X% more to hire someone has a pretty direct effect on hiring practices.

I just think it's absurd that you're even debating this.


Are you saying that if you increase the cost to hire, it *wont* affect how many people will get hired? I'd love to hear a defense of that position...



Then why argue it? You get that when you say "That's wrong!", it implies that you hold a negative position. Given that my proposal was an either/or situation, if you disagree with my assertion that more people would choose to have a job without benefits than no job at all, you are by default taking the opposite position.


If not, then you're just arguing for the sake of arguing, which is boring as hell and somewhat chickenshit. Don't attack my position if you're not willing to put up a counter position and defend it.



You're kidding right?



In what way? One condition is better than the other, thus it's obvious which one people would pick.

Which is better? A job without benefits, or no job? I think it's equally obvious that a job without benefits is better than no job. Thus, it's equally obvious that with the exception of crazy people everyone would pick the job.


Please tell me you aren't really this dense. Unless you're actually going to argue that having no job is preferable to having a job without benefits?




I do. Demonstrably more than you do apparently. Given that I can at least follow the flow of a post and the context of an argument, I'd say I'm already about 3 steps ahead of you.



I asked where they would come from, not where they would go to.

If your solution to increased costs is to get it from tax dollars, you have to get the extra tax dollars from somewhere. Unless you somehow magically think that you can drastically expand the coverage currently provided by those two programs to cover "everybody" and not increase the costs at all? Really? Sounds like you're still failing to grasp that no matter how creatively you shuffle money from one bucket into another, you don't actually ever increase the total amount of it.


That's a big flaw in a lot of ideas though, so I don't blame you. You're the victim of a massive campaign to convince people that if they take X dollars and hand it to the government, they'll get more money out the other end. It never works, but the assumption is repeated so often by so many people that it's not surprising you might just automatically think it will.

Edited, Sep 21st 2009 10:12pm by gbaji

Obviously if you run a widget factory and the cost of labor goes up, you just fire half your workforce and make 50% as many widgets as you used to. Or wait until you get a big widget order that would double your business and turn it down since you don't want to hire any expensive new people.

When did you move? Have you been pretending to be from France when all along you were really a filthy Quebecois?

I want you to take a look at all those companies that fed the unions their supply of employees by treating them like **** and forcing them to unionize and giving the unions more power by inciting the employees to demand more and ask if those unions would even be around today had the government stepped in back then and created sane labour laws. Big businesses and little governance is what gave you those unions.

Those bankers who did leave the country moved to places like Dubai, lured by near 7 figure salaries.

What they discovered, though, was that the cost of living in Dubai offset any sort of monetary gain they hoped to make. Sure, you're making a million bucks a year. But your (fairly high) taxes there go to subsidize Dubai's native 50% unemployment rate, and your beachfront condo (they're all beachfront there) eats up the rest of it.

Many of the businessmen who moved to Dubai are now trying to move back . . .

The filthy ginger has it exactly right.

Don't tell me it couldn't possibly happen again without government mandated protection.

Don't tell me that people will obviously get treated fairly without a union as long as they work hard.

Your ignorance of the history of the late 19th and early 20th century is pretty amazing. Most people pick up more than you know just by passing through life.

Contrary to your statement, many doctors become doctors for altruistic reasons. They only become greedy SOBs after they see their medical school bills. A friend of mine who just had his med school interview last week wants to be a surgeon because he wants to save lives.

Found an interesting survey, of California physicians. While it's true that a significant percentage (55%) of them have considered leaving the state because they believe healthcare is in crisis - and note that's the state, not the country - also noteworthy is that the reason for leaving has nothing to do with lower salaries, but it's primarily malpractice rates and the threat of lawsuit, followed by long hours. So that's why even Obama said that the precious pubby tort reform is sorely needed.

Also noteworthy is that 81% say the best benefit of being a doctor is helping patients. Only 19% are in it for the money ("earn a good living" is the exact answer.)