The Fundamentals of the Economy According to John McCain

[quote name='dmaul1114']Definitely true. Problem is the less educated American's are willing to work for the low wages the uneducated in other countries are. Thus jobs get shipped overseas, and now we have fewer and fewer jobs for our uneducated and unskilled workers.

Personally, I don't have a lot of sympathy. Just the nature of not getting an education or learning a skilled trade and global, capitalist society.[/quote]

On the other hand, I don't believe the myth that ideally everyone should go to college. Fact is not everyone is born with the intelligence necessary to make college a worthwhile expense of money and time. Just look at your local college's business school ;);)

Seriously though, people should be paid a fair wage for the work they do, wherever they live. That's not communism, that's being a decent moral human being. Borrowing a line from John Oliver, we put smoker/safety warnings on everything, we should also put unfair trade warnings on products - maybe symbolized by an icon of a big fat man pissing on a small destitute man. When Starbucks pays Ethiopian coffee bean famers just barely enough to survive, and then turns around and sells the coffee for $5 a pop to oblivious Americans, I think something is drastically wrong.

Nobody is arguing that the farmers have it easy. In a UN ranking of human development, Ethiopia placed 170th out of 177 countries. A recent visit to Fero found most coffee farmers working without shoes. Their clothes were ripped. Most live in mud huts with thatched roofs and subsist on the fruits and vegetables they grow. "We are angry," says Teshome Debigo, a 28-year-old farmer. "But to whom can we cry?"
This year the cooperative that manages the Fero farmers' production and sales produced 300,000 pounds of coffee. If the coffee sells as it did last year, each of the cooperative's 2,432 farmers will net about $120 - the total yearly cash earnings for themselves and, on average, four other family members. Another $20 per farmer is captured by the cooperatives and unions, which goes toward infrastructure and administration. Starbucks awards $15,000 to the producers of its premium lines. In Fero that amounts to about $6.20 per farmer.
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http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/03/05/8401343/index.htm
 
[quote name='camoor']On the other hand, I don't believe the myth that ideally everyone should go to college. Fact is not everyone is born with the intelligence necessary to make college a worthwhile expense of money and time. Just look at your local college's business school ;);)
[/QUOTE]

I agree. That's why I said education/learn a skilled trade. Not everyone is cut out for college and/or white collar careers. But people who want to do, are limited to, blue collar work need to at least learn a skilled trade be it as an electrician, plumber, carpenter, mechanic etc.

Not much you can do if you have little education and no marketable skills. If you can just do manual labor than any healthy person can do you're going to have a miserable life.

I do agree people should be paid a fair wage, but that's just not how it works for unskilled jobs in a capitalist society. And a pet peeve of mine is how many (not you, just being general here) who decry jobs being outsourced/not paid fair wages are the same who cry "socialism!!!" at any government intervention in the market. If they want the market to regulate itself, one consequence is that the unskilled are going to get paid shit if they can find jobs at all.

You can't promote a 100% free, unregulated market and also champion the cause of the unskilled laborer.
 
dmaul's wrong as usual but I'm not gonna bother correcting him because he has me on ignore.


Though he's definitely proven he has no understanding what-so-ever of macroeconomics.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']Pretty disgusting info there.[/quote]

I thought it was surprising when I read it too. So much for the "liberal" media.

[quote name='dmaul1114']I do agree people should be paid a fair wage, but that's just not how it works for unskilled jobs in a capitalist society. And a pet peeve of mine is how many (not you, just being general here) who decry jobs being outsourced/not paid fair wages are the same who cry "socialism!!!" at any government intervention in the market. If they want the market to regulate itself, one consequence is that the unskilled are going to get paid shit if they can find jobs at all.

You can't promote a 100% free, unregulated market and also champion the cause of the unskilled laborer.[/quote]

I agree with your sentiment, I guess I am just unfamiliar with these people. Most people I know who champion the cause of the less fortunate also support graduated taxation, welfare programs, and the like.
 
[quote name='camoor']
I agree with your sentiment, I guess I am just unfamiliar with these people. Most people I know who champion the cause of the less fortunate also support graduated taxation, welfare programs, and the like.[/QUOTE]

Think of republicans who decry low wages, jobs going overseas or to illegal immigrants. Yet are against taxes, market intervention by the government etc.

Liberals tend to champion that cause and support the social programs, income taxes etc.

But I guess it's not really that the conservatives/republicans are championing the cause of the less fortunate--it's more them just acting out against illegal immigrants and jobs going to other countries than any real pity for the working poor-->hence their stance on that topic but opposition to welfare, higher taxes etc. to help the working poor.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']I'd like to hear your side though, there are plenty of us here who enjoy reading varying opinions.[/QUOTE]

I wouldn't call it opinion...

I suggest reading The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.
 
[quote name='camoor']I don't think you can draw generalizations across the board just because your brother-in-law is not very bright about his finances.[/quote]


It's not a generalization. Americans are saving less. I can't find the poll but last year, expenditures were more than income for the average American. Why is that? Because American education is about making you a consumer and not a free thinker. I've never heard of a high school teaching basic financial principles. Compounding interest is something that's never touched. The difference between a 401(k) and a Roth IRA is never discussed. What is encouraged is kids coming to school with $200 purses just to look cool. The kid with the iPhone is the most popular, at least until the next hot gadget comes out. You can say it's a generalization but it doesn't make it any less true.
 
[quote name='Koggit']I wouldn't call it opinion...

I suggest reading The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.[/QUOTE]

I have, I just wanted to read your response to Dmaul.
 
[quote name='depascal22']It's not a generalization. Americans are saving less. I can't find the poll but last year, expenditures were more than income for the average American. Why is that? Because American education is about making you a consumer and not a free thinker. I've never heard of a high school teaching basic financial principles. Compounding interest is something that's never touched. The difference between a 401(k) and a Roth IRA is never discussed. What is encouraged is kids coming to school with $200 purses just to look cool. The kid with the iPhone is the most popular, at least until the next hot gadget comes out. You can say it's a generalization but it doesn't make it any less true.[/quote]

I know what you're getting at

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33490

But I think the flip-side is that if you're poor and you scrimp and save and do everything you can to get out of that situation, you have to both work yourself to exhaustion and get lucky to succeed. Sure there are plenty of examples where poor people spend money foolishly and people who make those decisions don't deserve sympathy. I think the problem is that for the ambitious, it's a damn hard road to plow, probably harder today then it was in the past.
 
It's a damn hard road but it could be easier with the right tools. You gotta get a plow before you can make rows. At the same time, it probably won't matter. People pay more attention to TV ads than anything that goes on in school.
 
[quote name='camoor']
But I think the flip-side is that if you're poor and you scrimp and save and do everything you can to get out of that situation, you have to both work yourself to exhaustion and get lucky to succeed. Sure there are plenty of examples where poor people spend money foolishly and people who make those decisions don't deserve sympathy. I think the problem is that for the ambitious, it's a damn hard road to plow, probably harder today then it was in the past.[/QUOTE]

I'd also guess that a lot more foolish spending happens in the middle class than among the working poor who are struggling just to pay bills.

People start making some decent money and then go crazy and buy a bigger house than they can afford (or in a nicer area than they can afford). Same with cars etc.

Foolish spending isn't limited to the lower class.
 
Gotta love this (from Paul Krugman of the NY Times):

McCain on banking and health

OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.

Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:
"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."
​
So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!
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