Vox Nova

31 Responses to “From Around the Web: Worth a Look”

1. Morning's Minion says:

   October 30, 2008 at 10:32 am

   Thanks for the link from the idiot calling Paul Krugman “stupid”. Looking forward to fruther economic insight from Paris Hilton, Joe the Plumber, and Will Farrell.
2. jonathanjones02 says:

   October 30, 2008 at 10:48 am

   I look forward to you stepping out of your hyper-partisan name-calling M.O. and explaning why he is wrong. (I wouldn’t agree or disagree with the fisking at this point, but it is worth reading. Or perhaps Krugman should never be questioned.)
3. blackadderiv says:

   October 30, 2008 at 10:52 am

   Actually, I thought the critique of Krugman was rather devastating.

   Also, if you want to criticize someone for calling Krugman “stupid” (which he is not), referring to him as “the idiot” kind of undercuts your point.
4. Morning's Minion says:

   October 30, 2008 at 11:05 am

   If you are sick, don’t you insist on seeing somebody who is trained in medicine, and don’t you desire the best training? I’m sick and tired of people like this Sailor charactter pretending to know what he’s talking about on economics. You know, I’m just getting tired of this American-style populist anti-intellectualism.
5. jonathanjones02 says:

   October 30, 2008 at 11:15 am

   I’m getting tired of running others down without at the very least a good faith attempt at response and explanation. Maybe he has good points, maybe he doesn’t. But you and your opinions are not self-evidently right.

   And there are plenty of good cases against inflating the money supply, and in favor of high human capital and against a spending spree of illusionary wealth. Both they and the opposing arguments are worth reading and considering.

   Preening and name-calling, much less so.
6. DarwinCatholic says:

   October 30, 2008 at 11:33 am

   MM,

   I seem to recall a point a couple weeks ago when your fellow blogger Michael Iafrate spent a couple dozen comments claiming that Krugman was evil, and ignorant, and should not be linked to by a Catholic blog. Odd that you didn’t show up and dismiss Iafrate as an “idiot”.

   Sailer is solid on some things, occasionally overreaches, but frankly he writes more substantive and interesting economic stuff than I usually see you do. (Though I would assume, given your credentials and job, that you would be capable of doing so if you took a few deep breaths and tried.)
7. jonathanjones02 says:

   October 30, 2008 at 11:46 am

   As an aside, I am trying to get my hands on this, and will post it when / if I can find it (I think it may be stuck behind university library firewalls) :

   http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx?RelNum=5409
8. Michael J. Iafrate says:

   October 30, 2008 at 11:55 am

   I seem to recall a point a couple weeks ago when your fellow blogger Michael Iafrate spent a couple dozen comments claiming that Krugman was evil, and ignorant, and should not be linked to by a Catholic blog.

   I didn’t say he was evil or ignorant. He’s obviously not ignorant. He’s got to be pretty smart to be able to help convince so many people that the current global economic policies are actually benefiting the majority of people when they clearly are not.

   And the problem I had was with the particular article and the views he expressed there with regard to sweatshops. THAT VIEWPOINT is what I thought should not be pushed on a Catholic blog.
9. Kyle Cupp says:

   October 30, 2008 at 12:15 pm

   Jonathan,

   Have you read any of Mark Helprin’s novels or short stories?
10. DarwinCatholic says:

    October 30, 2008 at 12:46 pm

    But his viewpoint on why allowing low wage factories to exist in the third world in the long run is not actually independant with his other views, Michael. Your attack on that was an attack on a fairly broad swath of economics.

    In that regard, you assault on Krugman is actually far more basic than Sailer’s (Sailer argues in the linked piece that Krugman has incorrectly diagnosed the causes of the recession, and thus our ability to get ourselves out if it quickly — which Sailer doesn’t think we can do). You, on the other hand, basically attacked Krugman for thinking that the law of supply and demand works.

    If MM is going to get on his high economic horse and label one of these two attacks on Krugman as coming from an “idiot”, it would have to be you. (That, however, would violate left wing collegiality.)
11. Michael J. Iafrate says:

    October 30, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    You, on the other hand, basically attacked Krugman for thinking that the law of supply and demand works.

    That’s not at all what I said. It is worthless to “dialogue” with you if you can’t even accurately represent what I said.
12. jonathanjones02 says:

    October 30, 2008 at 1:12 pm

    Jonathan,

    Have you read any of Mark Helprin’s novels or short stories?

    I’ve read (I think) nearly all of his non-fiction, and am going to reattempt A Winter’s Tale probably by summer. Do you have another fiction recommendation?
13. DarwinCatholic says:

    October 30, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    Jonathan,

    Soldier of the Great War is very good — though I still owe Kyle a review on it. (Very well written, but there are a few Helprin style elements that rub me a bit the wrong way.) I haven’t tried Winter’s Tale though my wife thought that it had the Helprin style laid on a little thicker than SotGW. Take that for good or ill as you will.

    Michael,

    If it’s all one to you I’d like to suggest we both avoid “dialoguing” as I’m strongly against turning nouns into verbs without cause. (Which is why I get a pained look on my face when someone asks me, “Where do you fellowship?” by way of wanting to know what church I belong to.)

    I’ll admit my summary of your view of Krugman’s column was intentionally concise and slanted for humor, but it strikes me as being essentially accurate: Krugman held that factories paying very low wages in the third world were overall a good thing because it allowed the world’s poorest to gain employment and make more than they had previously, and over time the creation of wealth and scarcening of cheap labor in those countries would drive wages up, thus helping them in the long run. You not only argued this was immoral (which is not contradictory to Krugman’s argument) but that it was unnecessary because one could simply pay the workers more right off and never go through the cheap labor phase — which so far as I can tell would mean asserting that the law of supply and demand simply does not apply to labor.

    I’m sorry if I mis-understood.
14. Michael J. Iafrate says:

    October 30, 2008 at 1:44 pm

    …which so far as I can tell would mean asserting that the law of supply and demand simply does not apply to labor.

    I did not assert any such thing because I do not apply terms which apply to commodities to human beings. My argument had nothing to do with the “law” of supply and demand. Corporations do, in fact, have the ability to pay workers a living wage. To deliberately pay sweatshop wages, indeed to search for ways to avoid paying a living wage by taking advantage of people, is sin. Period.
15. jonathanjones02 says:

    October 30, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    Forgot to include this. I agree with him that Blu-Ray is dead dead dead. The next generation will be direct download.

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=365
16. S.B. says:

    October 30, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    You might need to explain to Michael what the “law of supply and demand” is.
17. Antonio Manetti says:

    October 30, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    S.B. said:

    You might need to explain to Michael what the “law of supply and demand” is.

    Yes, please do. Let’s remind everybody of the the sacred precept that workers are just another commodity.
18. S.B. says:

    October 30, 2008 at 2:49 pm

    Wrong. If I say that human beings are subject to the law of gravity just as much as rocks are, that in no way means that I’m saying “human beings are nothing more than rocks.” It does mean, however, that if my plans for society are based on the assumption that humans are going to be able to leap off cliffs or high buildings and fly unaided, I need to do a little rethinking.
19. DarwinCatholic says:

    October 30, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    I don’t know if Jonathan wants his thread to turn into an economic philosophy discussion (though on the flipside — why not?) but I think Michael asks an important question which deserves discussion. (And the meeting I’m sitting in is looking like not being relevant to me for the next 20 minutes.)

    I don’t think that workers are commodities. I think workers are people made in God’s image with unique human dignity.

    However, that does not necessarily mean (so far as I can tell) that one can ignore the way things work (as described by economics) when dealing with questions dealing with wages and labor.

    Michael says that corporations do in fact have the ability to pay a living wage — but instead they’re often searching for ways to pay paying a living wage. Let’s construct a concrete example so we can play with it:

    Company ABC builds a factory in Indonesia where it was planning to employe 2000 people for $0.50/hr sewing shirts that would be sold in the US for $20 a piece. Michael sends them an email explaining Catholic social teaching, and they suddenly grow a conscience. What will they do?

    First they massively expand the factory so there will be less crampt working conditions, add extra lighting, install top notch air conditioning and cut the workday from 12hrs to 8hrs. They increase wages from $0.50 to $5.00.

    However, they now have some choices to make: Do they use much better technology so that only 200 workers will be needed to produce the same number of shirts which will be sold for $20 each? Do they employ the same 2000 workers at the same productivity, but sell the shirts for $80? And if they sell the shirts for $80, will they sell fewer, and thus not need as many workers?

    Further, if the going wage is $0.50 in the part of Indonesia where they built their factory, there will obviously be huge competition for those 200-2000 jobs at $5.00/hr. Do they get very picky and get the most educated, most experienced workers (thus excluding the poorest) or do they hire people are random or based on need? Certainly, they’ll have to work very hard to make sure that their local hiring managers aren’t exacting huge bribes in return for giving out these jobs that pay 10x the market. Either way, it’s likely that employment at this particular plant will simply become a closed club for the ‘haves’ and exclude the ‘have nots’.
20. Michael J. Iafrate says:

    October 30, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Construct examples all you want. Whatever other issues and decisions might arise for the capitalist, deliberate starvation wages are sinful.
21. DarwinCatholic says:

    October 30, 2008 at 3:55 pm

    I understand that you think that, but it’s that kind of inability to address the logical results of what you advocate that makes people label you as rejecting the law of supply and demand.

    Out of curiousity — if you think that law should not affect labor I take it you would make a personal commitment to buy the same number of units of any given good each year if the cost skyrocketed as a result of higher wages? So for example, if you currently buy three pairs of shoes a year for $50 each, you would still buy three pairs a year if the cost was $250 and you were guaranteed that all the incremental cost was going to paying living wages to all shoe workers?
22. Michael J. Iafrate says:

    October 30, 2008 at 4:08 pm

    First, I don’t buy 3 pairs of shoes a year.

    Second, yes I am willing to pay more money for products that come from just conditions. I pay more for coffee for example, because the real costs of coffee are not factored into the price you pay for regular coffee.

    But costs of things like garments need not skyrocket because, for example, shoes actually cost about $5 to make. Most of the price is mark-up. Fairly traded garments do not cost significantly more than sweatshop-produced garments. This is a scare tactic you are parroting, nothing more. It’s classic slight of hand. Nike charges you, what, $150 for a pair of shoes and says it can’t pay the factory workers more because then they’d have to “raise prices” on shoes? As if they haven’t raised prices already? Please.
23. Policraticus says:

    October 30, 2008 at 4:48 pm

    I am not sure how strong an analogy can be drawn between laws of nature and laws of economics. Sort of reminds me of the analogies that Dawkins and Pinker draw between physical laws and laws of cognitive function.
24. S.B. says:

    October 30, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    Fair enough . . . the law of supply and demand isn’t an unbreakable law of nature, and it’s certainly possible to imagine situations where it doesn’t apply very well or where people decide to buy more of a higher-priced good (e.g., Geffen goods or status goods). Nonetheless, it’s a fairly universal tendency, like the human tendency to fear death . . . the fact that some people can overcome or ignore their fear of death in some situations doesn’t mean that we could all do that as a normal course of action, and if you’re designing a large-scale social policy on the assumption that human beings don’t care about death, it will probably malfunction.
25. jonathanjones02 says:

    October 30, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    I don’t know if Jonathan wants his thread to turn into an economic philosophy discussion

    Hey, no problems. Darwin, I am glad you and S.B. are here, because I’ve followed your blogs for a while and have learned from them.
26. DarwinCatholic says:

    October 30, 2008 at 5:33 pm

    Poli,

    Actually, I might argue there’s a certain similarity to a physical laws with the law of supply and demand in that it’s not a way that things “have” to behave but rather a description of how things invariably happen unless some other force intervenes. Also making it a “law” would be that there’s no real explanation provided for _why_ thing behave that way, just a description of how they generally behave.

    Michael,

    Come to that, the real costs of something worth drinking are not factored into the costs of most coffee. For what it’s worth, I actually spend extra in order to buy products that are higher quality and artisan produced (including coffee — the better kinds from single estates actually end up making the growers more than “fair trade” coffee.) Partly for moral reasons, and partly because I think it’s better to have a few high quality things than many low quality ones. However, I also recognize that for people who make a quarter what I do, the Wal Mart option is the line between being able to have something essential and going without.

    I think you’re wrong to think that it wouldn’t require significant increases in the cost of consumer goods to pay what you consider a just wage. I also think I’m in a moderately good capacity to know this since my entire job centers around setting prices for consumer products — and I thus have a pretty good idea of profits. But I don’t necessarily expect you to believe me on that.

    One last item for clarity: I agree with you that it is a sin (and a serious one because it causes so much harm to the victem while enriching the perpetrator) to pay a worker less than a just wage. Nor do I think “He said he was willing to work for this much” necessarily constitutes a just wage. (It seems to me that a just wage would be based on some percentage of the value created by the worker through his labor. And if the employer is paying the worker less than that value — he’s cheating him.)

    So I don’t dispute that some employers with third world factories are sinning in how they treat their workers. But I fear that the kind of solutions you seem to propose to that problem would keep the third world poorer longer. Which is the other point on which I appear to disagree with you.
27. Blackadder says:

    October 30, 2008 at 6:15 pm

    I know I’m a little late to this particular party, but something Michael said kind of struck me as odd. He said (responding to Darwin’s claim that he thought Krugman was evil and ignorant on account of his defense of sweatshops):

    I didn’t say he was evil or ignorant. He’s obviously not ignorant. He’s got to be pretty smart to be able to help convince so many people that the current global economic policies are actually benefiting the majority of people when they clearly are not.

    It’s hard for me to square the first sentence here with the second. If it really is as clear as Michael thinks that free trade and globalization are causing horrible consequences in the developing world, then one would have to be fairly ignorant not to realize this. And indeed, Michael’s wording suggests that Krugman does realize this, but uses his vast intellectual abilities to fool other people into thinking it is actually a good thing. Which, if true, would seem pretty evil.

    From my perspective, it seems more likely that Krugman, being an Ivy League economics professor who just won a Nobel based on his work in international trade, probably knows the facts relating to globalization and trade at least as well as your average theology grad student. And if he says that free trade is a great boon to the developing world, that attempts to shut down sweatshops would harm the very people such efforts are meant to help, etc., then chances are this is because the facts are behind him on the point, not because he has some wicked desire to see poor people starve.
28. S.B. says:

    October 30, 2008 at 6:34 pm

    But I fear that the kind of solutions you seem to propose to that problem would keep the third world poorer longer.

    Has he ever proposed any solutions? Actual solutions, that is.
29. Michael J. Iafrate says:

    October 30, 2008 at 7:32 pm

    But I fear that the kind of solutions you seem to propose to that problem would keep the third world poorer longer.

    I am not sure how a call for just wages for all workers, if implemented, would result the poor staying poorer longer.
30. Zach says:

    October 30, 2008 at 9:27 pm

    The call won’t but the attempt to implement it by force surely will
31. Zach says:

    October 30, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    Which I know you said nothing about

    How’s it been goin?