[kiujhgbnj]

Interesting that all economists seem to be pro-business, anti-tax, anti-worker rights. You would almost think that most economists worked at banks or for university business schools.

In other research naval officers believe in a larger navy with lots of ships

[dkarl]

Economists pursue productivity single-mindedly and forget that their freedom to think about productivity and nothing else is based on the assumption that certain moral abuses are outlawed. Only the most deluded ideologue really thinks that economic efficiency just happens to coincide with human moral values. Sure, if you bring up eight-year-olds working in coal mines, a few people will say, "But that must have been caused by government interference, because eight-year-olds working in coal mines is really quite economically suboptimal! I can tell it's economically suboptimal because thinking about it makes me feel bad!" But they are in the minority. Most economists take for granted that economic productivity should be pursued only in a context in which certain moral wrongs are outlawed.

I pointed out in an earlier thread that the sales department will agree with you that systems reliability affects the bottom line, but when it comes to setting priorities, they'll fight tooth and nail to get all engineering resources dedicated to new products and features, and zero dedicated to reliability and infrastructure. It's the same with economists: they agree in principle that there should be laws enforcing basic human decency, but when push comes to shove they can't bring themselves to subordinate economic considerations. It's garden-variety déformation professionnelle. They have a hard time accepting that the value they dedicate their professional lives to is occasionally in conflict with something higher.

[dstorrs]

Yep, many economists do work for those institutions. And yep, all of them have /some/ particular axe to grind (everyone does -- I do, you do, etc). That doesn't mean that what they're saying isn't correct.

- Businesses are, in fact, what generates most of the wealth and innovation in a country

- Taxes, whether personal or corporate, are not economically efficient. Government can be compared to an electrical grid -- the money comes in one place, flows out somewhere else, and there are line losses on the way. (Government overhead, wastage, etc)

- As to workers' rights: any society represents a particular set of choices about production needs and social needs. Sometimes those needs are cooperative, sometimes orthogonal, and sometimes they are in opposition. When "workers' rights" means "give us the money and the time to innovate and consume outside of work", it's good for society. When it means instead "give us the power to force you to comply with stupid and inefficient rules about who can do what" (e.g. most modern union shops that I've encountered), that's bad for society.

[kiujhgbnj]

But it does suggest that economics is just politics by another name.

A survey of doctors would presumably agree on the function of an organ, a survey of hospital administrators might also agree on the need to cut treatment costs - this doesn't mean the opinions are equally accurate.

[mdda]

The labelling that you've chosen "pro-business, anti-tax, anti-worker rights" is politics itself.

The economists are more accurately characterized by 'anti-distortion'. The amount of distortion that should be accepted (for instance, to protect the disabled) is a matter of politics, but the article only addresses consensus issues.

[kiujhgbnj]

True, but the article implies that "economists all agree on these things, economists are experts - therefore these things are correct"

But the same responses would come from US politicians of both types - would Swedish or French economists have the same views?

[ippisl]

- Businesses are, in fact, what generates most of the wealth and innovation in a country

wealth and innovation are not the only things worth optimizing , nor are they the most important.

[gaius]

Money, not necessarily. But wealth means "stuff people want".

[ippisl]

according to this definition farmville , booze and cocaine are "wealth". So people who are using those on a daily basis should be considered wealthy ?

on the other hand , aren't good relationships considered wealth by your definition ? Businesses do relatively little to facilitate those(in more primitive societies they still had relationships , and probably at least as good as ours).

[hxa7241]

> That doesn't mean that what they're saying isn't correct.

But it can mean they are only seeing one small area of what is possibly correct. There could be many other correct things out there, that might be even better, but their view is constrained.

[scrod]

>When it means instead "give us the power to force you to comply with stupid and inefficient rules about who can do what" (e.g. most modern union shops that I've encountered), that's bad for society.

You've somehow managed to bring two logical fallacies in the same sentence — the straw man and the false dichotomy. No one genuinely struggling for the rights of workers ever advocates for either of those ways, and those outcomes aren't by any means the only possible alternatives.

The purpose of unions has always been to bargain collectively in situations where individual actions alone would result in a greater detriment to each worker. A corporation is by nature this same mechanism applied in the market, so which side you prefer — the worker or the owner — is fundamentally one of politics in the end.

[dstorrs]

>You've somehow managed to bring two logical fallacies in the same sentence — the straw man and the false dichotomy.

You're misreading.

I presented two possibilities, but nowhere did I claim that they were the only two possibilities -- ergo, no false dichotomy. You aren't clear about where exactly you believe that I presented a straw man, so I can't respond to that one. If you're saying that modern union shops do not result in the sort of inefficiencies I mention above, then the kindest response I can find is that we must have very different experience of union shops. I invite you to examine the union-imposed rules at, e.g., Yale Medical School, which is what I was particularly thinking of when I wrote that.

> The purpose of unions has always been to bargain collectively in situations where individual actions alone would result in a greater detriment to each worker.

Thank you for that basic restatement of the definition of "union." You did, however, leave out the important bit: that the nature of union bargaining is always the workers of a corporation demanding policy changes from the owners of a corporation.[1] These changes always involve a cost which reduces the bottom line profit of the corporation -- e.g. higher pay, shorter hours, etc. From a strictly short-term, monetary POV, anything that reduces the bottom line is non-optimal. In the long term, however, or when other measuring sticks are used (social health, GDP, etc) these changes may be enormously better than the policies they replace, because they result in more total wealth in the hands of the consumer, more leisure time in which to consume / innovate / create / be healthy / etc.

This is exactly what I said in my original post. Hopefully you will more clearly understand the more spelled-out version.

> A corporation is by nature this same mechanism [for using collective action when individual action would be sub-optimal] applied in the market, so which side you prefer — the worker or the owner — is fundamentally one of politics in the end.

While this is technically true (as in, it does not contain an explicit inaccuracy), there are some significant differences between a corporation and a union. Most notably, the benefits of being in a union accrue essentially equally to all members, whereas the benefits of being in a corporation do not -- the owners and top officers reap far more of the rewards than the "bottom rung" employees. Furthermore, their incentive structures are very different -- a tech support guy is paid $N/year as long as he shows up for work and the company doesn't go bust (incentive to keep the status quo), but the CEO is making most of his money off of stock options and/or bonus (incentive to change the status quo).

[1] I'm using the word "corporation" loosely here because it's more commonly applicable and it's easier than naming the various possible employing bodies (government, NGO, non-profit, etc). Most often it's a corporation per se.

[pedanticfreak]

Re: Taxes

Keep in mind the polar opposite of the power grid is that everyone keeps a personal generator they build with their own hands and continually feed fuel they gather with their own hands.

Sometimes a little ineffiency in one place allows you to be more efficient in other places. Don't knock the power grid and transitively the federal government.

[astine]

You might think that economistshold pro-business, anti-tax, anti-worker rights biases. Or you might think that the more easily demonstrated principles of economics hold pro-business, anti-tax, anti-worker rights biases. Given my limited studies of history and economics, I'd suggest the later.

[scrod]

If only we could discover a series of rules that would explain how perfectly self-interested robots behaved in a fictional market with no government/community interference in business on behalf of workers, where capital could be employed as a wealth-yielding instrument purely in and of itself, and where property gained from the proceeds of such was protected by the threat of violence. Surely then we could use those fundamental rules to help us predict how an ideal society should function. And I say ideal because clearly my preferred set of premises were definitely not chosen as a convenient rationalization for maintaining a pre-existing social structure that enabled the effective subjugation of most of society by a minority owner class.