Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Democrats Don't Understand Economics

First off, let me state categorically that health care is not a "right" in the same vein as free speech, prohibitions on unreasonable search and seizure, and a trial by peers.  Health care, like food, is a commodity--a valuable and important commodity, yes, but still a commodity.  Calling health care a "right" cheapens true rights.  We can debate how to provide this commodity to those for whom affording it can be difficult, as we do with food stamps, but calling it a right is done in an effort to end conversation, debate, and reason.  Many lefties, despite many examples to the contrary by their compatriots, still pretend to believe in free speech; if you wouldn't argue against the right of free speech, how can you argue against the so-called right to health care?  This is one of many reasons why calling health care a "right" is so insidious.

Why, then, am I not surprised to see Debbie Wasserman-Schultz call health care a right?

Commodities should be dealt with using principles of economics, not principles of the authoritarianism of a too-powerful government.

Democrats are also on the wrong side of the minimum wage debate.  Think about it:  what if someone's labor is only worth $10/hr?  You make it illegal for that person to have gainful employment when you require employers to pay a minimum of $15/hr.  No one will hire the aforementioned $10/hr worker--he or she becomes, in effect, a ward of the state, dependent on government handouts while losing the self-esteem that comes with fulfilling work.  The minimum wage chips away at this person's humanity every day by denying the ability to work, to take care of one's self, to contribute to society.

This doesn't stop Democrats from supporting a higher and higher minimum wage, though, even though it hurts those they claim to want to help:
This paper evaluates the wage, employment, and hours effects of the first and second phase-in of the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance, which raised the minimum wage from $9.47 to as much as $11 in 2015 and to as much as $13 in 2016. Using a variety of methods to analyze employment in all sectors paying below a specified real hourly wage rate, we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by 6-7 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll for such jobs decreased, implying that the Ordinance lowered the amount paid to workers in low-wage jobs by an average of $74 per month per job in 2016. Evidence attributes more modest effects to the first wage increase. We estimate an effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all wage levels, comparable to many prior studies.
Why are liberals so wrong on economic questions? Is it because math is harrrrrrrrd?

4 comments:

  1. If you ultimately--even if theoretically--have to force someone else to provide you with something, it's not a right. If all doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, etc., went on strike, how would you exercise your "right" to healthcare? You can't, without forcing others into laboring on your behalf.

    Freedom of speech can be taken away, but it is not provided to you by others. Same with religion, freedom from search-and-seizure, etc. Those are rights and require nothing from any one else except that they stay out of your way.

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  2. The minimum wage is always zero.

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  3. It's because feelz are more important than numbers to them.
    (That's basically what A. Occluded Cortex said, after all.)

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  4. Auntie Ann: to play devil's advocate for a moment, we *do* shanghai people to serve as jurors. Is that the exception that proves the rule?

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