Employees and employers have this thing they do where they agree to the value of any given individual contribution to an operation. Left to its own devices the job market and the free market will find parity not just in costs but prices.
It’s a beautiful thing and it works. But Democrats can’t leave anything alone.
They are obsessed with using the government to meddle. Intrusions that result in outcomes opposite to those advertised.
I just read Steve’s post North Country “Wood Welfare” and went to the NHPR article he links to and pulled this additional quote from “beleagured” logger Jay Matthews
“I’m concerned with my electrical bill like anybody, but … I think we’d probably be better off paying a little more money in our rate and then still have the logging community working, [rather than] to put ’em all out of business,” Matthews says.
Note the assumed all inclusive “…we” part – only if you are a logger. WHY should the rest of us pay more for your lifestyle/business model via enforced corporate welfare? I’m out of work (but working on a plan) so why should you demand that *I* and others like me have to pay more for you to keep your company going? Fairness? I don’t think so. As a
New Hampshire used to be ‘owned’ by railroads, or so the story goes. These days it’s the hospital/insurance cartels. Their influence shapes policy in Concord and buys votes from elected officials and even officeholders whose eyes wander toward DC.
Money talks and the Cartel’s got a lot of it.
But Iowa and Florida just put new laws in force that creates options for doctors and patients looking to put the free market to work on health care costs, and New Hampshire should take a look.
Yesterday, HotAir! reported that Wal-Mart, that place where they take all those “people you see at” pictures, was selling clothing (online at least) with the message ‘Impeach 45.’ I guess you won’t be seeing anyone at Wal-Mart buying or wearing one. They Pulled the product page.
Not a freaking clue:
Wow – just wow. RRftSotRP (Republican Republican for the Sake of the Rebin big steaming piles on this one. The writer is obviously upset in that there is not total agreement with NH GOP Party anointed candidates. The overriding message is exemplified by this:
(courtesy of uber-Progressive Joe Wernig)
Er, no, I’m not. Not that from the writer. Nor should you.
New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen almost sounds as if she has traded her copy of Karl Marx’ Das Kapital for Adam Smiths ‘Wealth of Nations.’ She actually said, “...people who are willing to pay more, that they have that option of going to their doctor and hospital no matter what.“
The New Hampshire Democrat Party is wondering where Republican State Senator (and likely candidate for higher office) Jeb Bradley stands on the minimum wage? I confess, so do I.
Does State Senator Bradley embrace the left’s obsessive desire to depress employment among teens and minorities by using legislative force to define the value of labor or is he more inclined to let the person whose labor it is come to an agreement with an employer over the real value of their time and skill-set with regard to the position in which they are to be retained?
The New Hampshire Democrat position is that modern day Granite State employees and employers are simply too stupid or corrupt to be permitted to define these terms without government interference. Is that Senator Bradley’s position as well?
The first supplies of bottled water to arrive to aid those affected by hurricane Sandy did not come from FEMA, which has a large staging area in Georgia stocked with pallet after pallet of bottled water for just such an occassion. Nestle America, without any coordination with FEMA or any government agency, provided half a million bottles (gratis) to a staging facility in Sommerset New Jersey, long before FEMA even got its water moving.
“It seems obvious to me now–though I have been slow, I must say, in coming to the conclusion–that the institution of private property is one of the main things that have given man that limited amount of free-and-equalness that Marx hoped to render infinite by abolishing this institution. Strangely enough, Marx was the first to … Read more
There is a lovely new candidate survey being mailed out to New Hampshire candidates from the Concord Monitor. While most of the questions are loaded to demarcate the right left divide in state politics–have to make sure we know who the “TEA Party Extremists” are–one question in particular stood out.
“Do you support last year’s 50% cut in university Funding…”
Was at another event last nite and was rather tired when I got home so only a wee bit of surfing was done. I did note that one post (somewhere) noted that a chartered plane had flown from Boston, landed in Chicago, and then made its way to an airport near Congressman Paul Ryan’s home town. Typical caveat was given – head fake or real?
Mr. ‘Spread-the-Wealth’ “You-didn’t-build-that” Obama is having another bad week after reading a bit too much off the left side of the TelePrompTer. His Divine Luminance seems to have forgotten what country he is trying to lord over.
How about those roads and bridges? How did we get those? Tax dollars. Well where’d those tax dollars come from? Taxpayers Where’d the taxpayers get the money for the government to tax in the first place? Jobs and commerce Where’d those jobs and commerce come from? Someone started a business, exchanged their product or service … Read more
I think that both Steve’s and Mike’s posts on the ills of Socialism at spot on and as a counter point to what some feel are the overriding positives of Socialism, one of the email lists I’m on, a request came in to define “Free Market”:
I’m trying to write a short description of why the free market is good, why we should encourage it.
My problem is that I don’t have the skills of Friedman, Hayek, Rothbard, Hazlitt, Bastiat, Smith, etc. to be able to convincingly describe its virtues. What I hope is that through crowdsourcing, we can come up with a good description.
So please, everybody, give me a sentence or a paragraph explaining why a free market is a good thing that we should “cherish”.
To get things started I will start with a paraphrase of Milton Friedman [Nobel Prize winner]:
“The record of history is crystal-clear. The free market is the best way so far discovered of improving the lot of ordinary people.”
Now, it could be said that what Mitterand did (and rejected, as well as China, and the Soviet Union, and the rest of the Iron Curtain countries, plus Viet Nam and what even Sweden is moving away from and….well, you get the idea), and what Hollande is about to do, just do the opposite. So, a number of folks responded including moi:
The Definition:
The free market (the TRUE free market) is the simplest of systems: you have something I would like to have, and visa versa. For this transaction to happen, I am estimating the value of what I have versus the value *I* place on what you have to transact. I will make the trade if it is in my self-interest and my perception is that I will become “richer” in value by giving you what I have, and you give me what I would like of yours. This is a win-win situation as the other person is ALSO making the same calculation. My self-interest is satisfied – and the other person’s is as well. I want your dozen ears of corn more than the $3.00 in my pocket; you would rather have my $3.00 and we agree to swap. That is the essence of free market capitalism – a price point is reached where the transaction happens, or not. That price signal says my want is sufficient to pay the price that affords you to cover your costs, and a bit of extra (profit) to start your process all over again and is credited as possible “wealth to you”.
Note this – one ONLY succeeds when you offer something of value to ME. It means that your good or service PLEASES me sufficiently to give you something for it. You win ONLY by pleasing and serving others. Yes, it is in your self-interest to serve others for when you do so, and do it well, you will “profit” by having more transactions come your way.
The Freedom:
I found myself in a post office yesterday. Gawd. I waited in line, and waited in line…and waited in line. The counter had
one, and only one, postal employee at “work.” She chatted and talked and chatted and talked with the captive customer ahead of me. And I waited some more…I waited longer than I’ve ever waited in line in a Publix or any other grocery store. I waited longer than in any Wal-Mart I’ve ever been in. I waited longer for service than I’ve ever waited at any restaurant that I didn’t walk out of.
Why did I put up with that? Because the post office has a monopoly of course! Why not open it up to free market competition? Oh no! We couldn’t allow that! The private companies would “skim the cream.” Rural service would suffer! Mail would be too complicated!
Oh bosh. Like food? Like shoes? Don’t we need a monopoly government service to make sure that “rural areas” get enough food and shoes? To make sure that some stores don’t “skim the cream” on food and shoes? But I digress. The reason the post office has a monopoly is that it’s a bloated political bureaucracy that has outlived its usefulness. You doubt me? Here’s what Thomas Jefferson had to say about the early post office:
First in Wisconsin and now in Colorado. In a post at Townhall:
The Douglas County School District, a suburban community south of Denver, Colorado, has decided to part ways with their teachers’ union in the absence of progress on a new contract which expired June 30th, 2012.
“The Board of Education finds and declares that the Collective Bargaining Agreements between the District and the Unions,” said the district on July 3rd in its formal resolution dissolving the bonds between the union and the district, “which had been effective from July 1, 2011 through and including June 30, 2012, are now expired and of no legal effect whatsoever.”
The dissolution between the district and the union is unprecedented and sources close to the union tell me that unions are pensively watching, worried that other districts around Colorado and the country could take the same action as Douglas County has.
We can only hope.
The UN want’s more money. They are after the global wealth tax again, a tax favored by Obama, and the social/environmental justice movements who benefit from it. But we know that the money will never actually get to the poor, not enough of it. Nor will it alleviate anything but the misery of some NGO functionary or UN lackey paid to make sure pennies on every dollar end up in the hands of third world dictators. So perhaps the UN could suggest a policy that will actually help the poor?
Instead of taxing people why not encourage things that actually reduce poverty. Property rights and rule of law. People who know that their labor will produce things that will not be seized or stolen by capricious warlords or uncontested acts of theft or intimidation, are more likley to work to improve their lives; because they know that the work may actually…you know…improve their lives.
In the most recent issue of National Review Gary Wolfram, Professors of Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College wrote this in regard to Mises and Hayek’s Austrian business-cycle theory.
""This theory emphasizes the role of the interest rate in bringing together the plans of producers and consumers. The interest rate is the price of loanable funds — in effect, the price of money — and, like the price of any good or service, it gives producers information about consumers’ behavior and the actions of other producers. For example, if consumers wish to save — to put their money in banks, which lend it out — they will increase the supply of loanable funds, putting downward pressure on the interest rate. Producers can then borrow that money cheaply and invest in capital goods such as machinery, factories, and housing — which they can use to create goods for consumers to buy in the future with the money they have saved. Thus do producers and consumers arrive at the equilibrium interest rate, which matches producers’ plans to invest in capital goods with consumers’ desire to save.
It’s simple economics. Government money comes from taxpayers. The more government spends the more it relies on taxpayers to pay for its spending. The less money taxpayers have the smaller the economy will be the fewer jobs there are, which means less income, less taxes, more debt. The stimulus, the huge budget bills, the massive … Read more