Analysis:
A Bad Idea for Tax Reform
Social Ends and Taxing Means
Examples of how tax policy promotes cultural values are far too many to list. They span the spectrum of life at the personal, group, and society levels. It is enough to point to several that have had enormous, if in some cases wholly subtle, influence.
A quick number for one of these social tuning knobs can be found in the tax consequences of marriages, and never mind the intricate details of "marriage penalty taxes" and abatements of such burdens. The reality is that two people who are married do not have to pay as much on their combined income as one person making that much, even though those two people living together will experience scale economies impossible for the one person to achieve.
The argument goes, of course, that because our tax system is progressive, the combined incomes would be unfairly exposed to a higher marginal tax rate than each individual's income would have been; but this argument is entirely fallacious: the two people have a combined income that is used by the household in exactly the same manner as the income of the single person would be.
That the federal government is doing everything in its power to prevent gay marriages is an exercise in preventing the huge marriage tax shield from accruing to a life-style the government does not want to promote. Effectively, the tax code's benefits are for intended recipients only, and not for those whose behaviors, actions, and beliefs are contrary to what is government approved. "Fairness" in tax policy is a specious concept when it comes to marriage benefits: the shields exist for those whose lifestyles comport with specific beliefs that arguably have narrowly religious backdrops. This same motive force of specific tax policies associated with specific religious doctrines comes into play in an unspoken and subtle way in the later part of this article; but first, as a primer for the pump, a glaring example of tax policy being used to shape society is in order.
A remarkable success story of how tax policy can promote a desired social policy can be found in the treatment of owner-occupied housing in the U.S. tax code. The deductibility of the interest on mortgage loans is a compelling incentive for households to allocate a disproportionate share of income toward investment in the physical asset of a house; but mortgage interest deductibility is only one of several incentives the tax code provides for owner-occupied housing. The result of this deliberate policy by the government has been a massive over-production of single-family houses with attendant distortions of physical and financial capital flows. Whether or not this has been "good" policy is for social and economics commentators; but the long-term and profound effects upon how the consumers have shaped the way resources are used in the United States is beyond any dispute.
A Digression for Some Arithmetic
Before proceeding with the main point of this article, some terminology and associated math should be set forth, just in case some readers don't spend serious time studying and remembering how different types of taxes work.
It is not an oversimplification to state that a tax system can operate one of four ways:
Flat tax: This is a tax of the same dollar amount upon everyone. It would be the ultimate in simplicity as a federal revenue generator. Every citizen pays the same amount of money every year. Let's say the flat tax was $2,000 per head. With about 285 million citizens, that would come out to be around $570 billion in federal tax revenue. Although the love child of a few economists who admire its lack of distorting effects on an economy, the flat tax suffers from the fatal flaw that it would too obviously hurt people of limited means far more than it would those with lots of money.
Proportional tax: This tax is occasionally misnamed a "flat tax," but a proportional tax applies the same percentage tax rate to all people, regardless of how much they make. Variations on the theme are plentiful, and below, several of them will be investigated a bit more deeply because it appears that some version of a proportional tax is going to be recommended by the President's Commission on Tax Reform. Suffice it to note that sales taxes are almost always proportional taxes on retail prices of goods. Value added taxes (VATs) are proportional taxes on the wholesale prices at various stages of production, but this just means that the sales tax is going to be buried in the final prices of goods instead of being on direct display at the checkout register. As a rough estimate of the tax revenue generated by a national sales tax, suppose a tax of 15% were to be assessed on the final output of all new goods and services produced in the United States, as measured by the gross domestic product for 2004. According to the 2004 CIA World Factbook, the GDP for 2004 for the United States was $10.98 trillion, so a 15% tax on this amount would generate federal tax revenues totaling $1.65 trillion.
Regressive tax: Every now and then, some hard-core, Right-wing economist brings up the idea of making taxes higher for people who make less money. The idea is that, if folks know they'll pay more if they earn less, they'll have a whole lot of incentive to work harder so they don't have to pay as much in tax on the last dollar they earn. And, yes, there really are economists who think a regressive tax would be a great idea, even though the whole idea is so obviously unfair on its face that it could never happen... at least, not if it was too obvious.
Progressive tax: Income taxes based on a progressivity principle are the most common type in the world. Progressive taxes assess a higher tax rate to income at higher and higher levels. Consider a relatively simple, three-tier structure:
For income of $15,000 or less, a 10% tax rate is applied.
For income between $15,001 and $40,000, a 20% tax rate is applied.
For income greater than $40,000, a 30% tax rate is applied.
So, for a person making, say, $12,000, the total income tax bill would be
10%×$12,000 = $1,200.
For a person making, say, $25,000, the total income tax bill would be
10%×$15,000 + 20%×$10,000 = $3,500.
And for a person making, say, $70,000, the total income tax bill would be
10%×$15,000 + 20%×$25,000 + 30%×$35,000 = $17,000
Notice several features of progressive taxes. First, not all income is taxed at the highest rate; only the income that falls in a given tax bracket gets hit at the so-called "marginal rate." Second, progressive taxes are annoyingly complicated little suckers. It's not all that easy to predict how much income tax will have to be paid in a given year, and this is made worse by Congress constantly tinkering with both the rates in the different levels and by where each level begins and ends. Most people fill out a W-4 form, which is supposed to give an employer a rough idea of where an employee's income will fall in the tax tables and therefore give a decent idea of how much to withhold for the employee; but this doesn't always work very well, especially for people who work multiple, part-time jobs that cause income to stack in a way that kicks them into higher marginal tax brackets than the W-4 can properly predict.
For better or worse, though, the United States and most of the civilized world have some form of progressivity in their personal and corporate income tax structures, although the U.S. has been on a path over the past several decades of "flattening" the structure by reducing the number of tiers. The President's tax commission might very well finish the job by entirely dispensing with the tiers; but converting the federal income tax structure into a proportional income tax would be too obviously a windfall to those with high incomes because it would clearly relieve them of the burden of facing progressively higher marginal tax rates on the upper reaches of their income.
This means the tax must come in a better-looking package, one that promotes some apparently important ideal within the American psyche. Imagine a tax that is at once simple and promotes old-fashioned Protestant frugality.
Tax Structures to Promote Savings: Slapping the Consumers
A proportional tax fills the bill, particularly if the tax is only on consumption because everyone knows that Americans don't save enough of their income, and everyone knows that saving money is a good thing. Actually, the importance of increasing the savings rate among Americans is dubious on its face, especially when the clarion call for more savings comes from pro-business interests, which have great incentive to see Americans save lots of money. The reason is that, if people save more, this increases the supply of lendable funds available for banks and other financial institutions to lend. But when the supply of anything increases, its price decreases; and the price of lendable funds is the interest rate charged on the loans. That means, if Americans save lots more money, interest rates for businesses will go down, making leveraged investments in plant and equipment (as well as leveraged take-overs and buy-outs) cheaper.
But this would be good for regular people, too, one might argue. Not really: first, a consumption tax would be punishing people for trying to take advantage of lower interest rates on anything that had to do with consumption; and second, business investment in plant and equipment has had a marked tendency to be used to replace human capital, not to supplement it. In other words, the modern American business model has had as one of its clear goals the use of physical capital as a "substitute," not a "complement," for labor, meaning that Americans pouring money into savings accounts are going to accelerate the industrial shift that has for years been progressively and deliberately degrading and diminishing the jobs market in the U.S.
And if that weren't enough, recall that interest rates will be falling as more money is saved, so those average Americans, who used to spend their money, now will be saving much of that money at lower and lower rates.
And One Last Whack, Just for Good Measure
A quick look at two hypothetical Americans will drive home another, compelling downside of a national sales tax. Consider the case of Byron and Barton Binkwater, brothers whose lives diverged early on and who now live on opposite sides of the tracks.
Byron Binkwater works like a dog at the EZ-Lube on the south-east side of town, out by the Snarf-n-Barf. He earns total income of $20,000 a year.
Barton Binkwater hit the big time, rising up the corporate ladder at Purcell's Parts down on River Street right by where the Steak Sandwich Outlet used to have its corporate offices. Barton earns $80,000 a year.
Byron and Barton are still a lot alike in many ways. Most importantly, they have the same essential needs in life, even though both of them would say that isn't so. Being of similar builds and health, there is no difference in what they need to stay alive and healthy underneath their quite different outward lifestyles. What they want might be worlds apart, but what they need just to keep going from one day to the next is pretty much the same: roughly the same number of calories, about the same amount of shelter, 'round about the same amount of heat and air conditioning, somewhere near the same medicines. In economics, this "same" aggregate amount is called "autonomous consumption": the amount of money that is necessary regardless of whether there's any income or not. It's not something that varies with lifestyle, it's not something that varies with who a person is and where that person's station in life happens to be. When people are better off, they almost always think they simply must have more just to keep body and soul together, but that's just a mark of their changing wants, not their changing needs.
After all is said and done, Byron and Barton both need $8,000 just to stay alive. That's the basic amount of money each must spend, and anything either of them spends above and beyond that amount is discretionary, whether either of them wants to admit it or not.
Now, if each of them actually only spent what was absolutely necessary and put the rest away in savings, a consumption tax of 15% would hit each of them like this:
Byron spends $8,000 that is exposed to a 15% tax; so his tax bill is
15%×$8,000 = $1,200.
Barton spends $8,000 that is exposed to a 15% tax; so his tax bill is the same
15%×$8,000 = $1,200.
What could be more fair? They both pay the same amount of tax!
Ah, but look more closely at the tax rate each of these fellows faces on income:
Byron pays consumption tax of $1,200 on income of $20,000, so his income tax rate is
$1,200÷$20,000 = 6%.
Barton pays consumption tax of $1,200 on income of $80,000, so his income tax rate is
$1,200÷$80,000 = 1.5%.
Holy Moses! So this is why there's an old saying in macroeconomics:
A proportional tax on sales is a regressive tax on income.
In fact, Barton could spend a whole lot more than $8,000 on consumption and still have an income tax rate below Byron's. Doing a little bit of algebra, Barton would have to spend $32,000 on consumption before he'd pay the same, 6% income tax rate Byron is paying just to buy enough to stay alive.
Oh, the Feds Wouldn't Let That Happen... Would They?
Surely, any such tax would be lower on food and medicines than it would on luxury items, the argument might go. Perhaps it would be, but any tax whatsoever on essentials would have the same result: it would be a regressive tax on income. It wouldn't matter what the tax rate was, it would still apply to both Barton and Byron the same way on their purchases of essentials, so it would create the same regressivity when looked at as an income tax. Unless the tax commission proposes that essentials of life be exempt from a national sales tax, the poor will be punished more than the rich, based upon income.
So the only way to take away the regressivity feature of a national sales tax would be to exempt all basic foods and medicines; but that poses a major problem for tax planners: those essentials comprise a huge amount of the consumption expenditures in the U.S.: exempting all of the basics people need leaves a much thinner tax base from which to draw federal revenues. One way or the other, at least some positive sales tax rate would have to be applied to at least some consumption items that are essential to people. And once that requirement of a national sales tax is acknowledged, at its core, the tax becomes regressive.
But that just means the federal tax system will continue to be used to promote social and economic goals of those who manage its details.
The Dark Wraith has spoken.
Published 6/27/2005 12:34:00 PM
<< 93 Comments Total
...the two people have a combined income that is used by the household in exactly the same manner as the income of the single person would be.
I'm not going to disagree totally with your point in concept, however logic says couples with two incomes are much more likely to be in a position to maximize their pre-tax dererrals into 401k, etc. (assuming their employers have a tax deferred retirement plan available). This gives an a potentially significant advantage to the married couple, all other things being equal.
Well, yes, Mr. Goat. I was trying to be generous by assuming we were talking about a married couple too stupid to see the incredible panoply of benefits accruing to married folks.
In fact, as I note in a comment in the cross-post of this article over at the Big Brass Blog, according to Harper's Index, there are no fewer than 1,138 benefits at the federal level directly tied to being married.
Structurally, these benefits swing consumption/savings decisions all kinds of ways, and it would be an almost impossible task to see which are dominant and how the final picture from them emerges. I do perceive—and my economics training may very well be biasing my perception, here—a tendency for the overall effect to be toward more saving; but other effects of marriage pull in the opposite direction. Specifically, children tend to propel consumption, especially in certain stages of their growing-up years. So, too, does age of the couple, which tends to deeply affect consumption versus savings patterns.
Yes, indeed, Mr. Goat, it's a complicated subject with lots of numbers and a whole lot of chances for ideological axes to grind waiting just beneath the surface. In other words, it's economics!
The Dark Wraith strives to bore the rest of the world to death with his fetishes.
And for those that do maximize deferrals it not like they really get anything out of their house fund or compnay stock. Thanks of course to the nice folks like Mr. Boosh and Kenny Boy.
Congratulations on passing 20,000. I haven't been paying attention; when did that happen?
And thus it has ever been, I'm sure. FWIW, Pennsylvania's income tax is (essentially) a flat percentage of income at around 2.5% (I think). MA's is a progressive one, but it's been at least ten years since ragging it with the name "Taxachusetts" was in any way accurate. MA now is down in the middle of the pack when it comes to state taxes.
- oddjob
I now see I should've referenced the quote I was replying to. My bad:
But that just means the federal tax system will continue to be used to promote social and economic goals of those who manage its details.
- oddjob
Good afternoon, Mr. Goat.
It was a couple of days ago that we crossed the 20,000 mark. Unlike some counters, this one has an almost unlimited log size, so that means there is no systematic recounting of visitors whose first time here was long ago. That means the counter down there is pretty much right on the money for how many distinct computers have hit this blog.
Of course, that hundred thousand mark is still a l-o-o-o-o-ng way off.
The Dark Wraith figures it won't hit the big time until probably some time around the return of the Lord.
[With my luck, the world will come to an end when the counter reads 99,999.]
An interesting mathematical consequence of proportional state taxes, OddJob, is that, when they are combined with a progressive federal tax, the total effect is merely to increase the rate in each tax bracket of the federal tax. But what that means is that, as a percentage increase, the rate hike is falling as the taxpayer's income rises.
Here's what I mean. Consider a 2.5% state tax on all income. That's a perfectly proportional tax. Now, put that together with the simple, progressive tax structure in the article, above. The net effect will be as follows:
The 10% tax bracket becomes a 12.5% effective, overall rate, for a 25% increase.
The 20% tax bracket becomes a 22.5% effective, overall rate, for a 12.5% increase.
The 30% tax bracket becomes a 32.5% effective, overall rate, for an 8.33% increase.
That means, among other things, when a proportional state (or local) income tax is raised across the board, the rate hike is regressive on income in its impact!
The Dark Wraith loves financial mathematics.
"...the two people have a combined income that is used by the household in exactly the same manner as the income of the single person would be."
umm, wouldn't the second person use a bit more energy, perhaps heating water, and require more food? i quibble. i'm sure that is outweighed by the other economies.
the concrete examples are great. makes the effects of the various schemes easily understood. any thoughts on what you see as likely from the advisory panel.
Good evening, Dread Pirate Roberts.
This article signals my suspicions about what's coming: some kind of proportional tax.
I don't see a value added tax as very likely; there are way too many corporations in the consumer goods manufacturing and supply chain lining up to scream bloody murder about the paperwork nightmare it would create.
It looks to me like, if the neo-cons want a proportional tax, the easiest way to go will be with a national sales tax. That will have states and cities howling at the tops of their lungs, but they don't hold anywhere near the political power of the manufacturers.
Besides, a national sales tax would have the beauty, by its nature, of leaving the military/industrial complex completely untouched, whereas it would be politically too obvious to carve exemptions for those cats into an otherwise broad-based VAT.
My guess is that there would be a considerable phase-in period, and all kinds of candy would be thrown out to special interest groups to keep the rioting down to a low roar; but in the end, the proportional tax would pretty much completely replace the income tax system as we know it, although the Commission might not make the proposal sound that sweeping in its report of recommendations.
That, at least, is how the Dark Wraith sees it coming down.
Good evening, Dark Wraith - Even though taxes are difficult to think about *yuck*, you've given us some good information to keep in mind. It seems that taxes are never fair to everyone. Someone always has to end up paying more. The example of the brothers is an astounding piece.
But, since much of the US economy is driven by unbridled consumer spending, wouldn't a National Sales tax push our already fragile economy into recession?
Of course, from an environmental standpoint, any consumption tax is good, since American hyper-consumerism creates pollution and depletes non-renewable resources, contributes to global warming, deforestation, mass extinction, etc, etc. But I've not yet seen a convincing alternative economic plan provided by the Green party or the like that could provide both a robust economy and a sustainable environment. (I'm not saying that it can't be done- I just haven't seen it yet, unfortunately.)
Huh, I didn't know that you were an econ person, Dark Wraith. Now I see that it's right there on your "about the author." I'll have to visit more often.
I was recently introduced to the field myself at college and I loved it so much I decided to major in it.
Contrary to the boredom others might experience, I find what you wrote very interesting. I have these thoughts to offer:
First, a point on marriage. My econ textbook taught me that marriage serves either as a tax or a subsidy, depending on the incomes of the two people. If the two individuals make similar incomes, say $50K each, they will pay more taxes as a couple than they would individually, because their combined incomes bring them to a higher bracket. If they make varying incomes, say someone who makes nothing and someone who makes $100K, the couple will pay fewer taxes, because they will be able to take advantage of the tax-free income the individual earning nothing was not previously taking advantage of.
The textbook said that for 58% of Americans, marriage results in a tax subsidy, and for 42%, it results in a tax penalty.
You said: "the two people have a combined income that is used by the household in exactly the same manner as the income of the single person would be."
This may be true. But this attests to the virtues with living with one another and sharing each others' assets. It does not necessarily attest to the virtues of acquiring a legal recognition of marriage.
I am not taking into account the myriad financial advantages marriage can provide through reduced health care costs, better 401Ks, etc. But my point is this: marriage is not economically beneficial every time. Most of the time, it is, but each couple needs to be analyzed separately to decide whether or not it's a good idea.
Now on to to the tax issue.
Virtually all sales taxes (the exception being luxury taxes) will be regressive. This is a significant disadvantage. But allow me to point out the advantages.
1. A sales tax will actually increase long-term consumption. It's counterintuitive. I didn't buy it when my econ teacher first tried to explain it to me. But essentially, the theory is that while consumption is reduced in the short term, the increased savings and investment actually increase the economy's capacity to produce consumable goods, and overall consumption increases as a result.
You say that this can be a bad thing, because this investment is often into machines directed at replacing human employment. Here I must strongly disagree with you. The mechanization of jobs does not so much eliminate jobs, as much it replaces them. It replaces manufacturing jobs with white collar jobs. People need no longer work at tasks machines can now perform, and instead can become doctors, lawyers, authors, etc. Indeed, it is largely because our economy has become so mechanized that we have seen such a shift, and this is why education is so much more important than it was in the past--we have less need for unskilled manufacturing jobs and more for skilled white collar ones. As I see it, increased savings leads to increased investment (because loans are cheaper) which leads to increased mechanization, which leads to a stronger economy (more consumable goods are produced) and higher-quality jobs, all of which can only be positive aspects.
2. Moving away from an income tax would remove the incentive not to earn additional income.
3. The most important thing that any good tax reform must do is provide simplicity. The amount of time and money wasted just on figuring out how many taxes are owed make the current system unacceptably inefficient. What you call a proportional tax (I call it a flat tax, and do not consider it a misnomer to do so--a standard percentage can just as easibly be described as "flat" as a standard fee) would provide this simplicity. This would be true whether it was flat sales tax or a flat income tax.
I think that a flat tax is quite imperative for providing simplicity, and therefore efficiency, along with fairness. The debate for me is whether this is best done with a flat income or sales tax. The sales tax has the the first two advantages I listed earlier--it would increase the incentive to earn more income while at the same time increasing the incentive to save more of that income. The income tax has the advantage of being able to address regressivity. For instance, the first $20,000 could be tax exempt, providing for the basic needs of everyone.
I consider the advantages and disadvantages of both to be roughly equal. But what is truly important is simplification, and I would be satisfied with any reform that achieved that.
But more important to me than whether the tax is on income or sales, or flat or progressive, is that our government's elaborate system of subsidies, deductions and credits be done away with.
This would surely be a politically impossible task. Everyone has their favorite tax breaks and government handouts. Most people can see that the overall system is deeply flawed, but justify their own personal handouts and tax breaks as worthy exceptions. Farmers will justify their subsidies, churches their charitable tax deductions, etc. Personally, I would like to keep the tax breaks and credits on alternative energy sources.
But if I am to expect others to give up the goodies that benefit themselves, I must be ready to give up mine as well. Thus I advocate the elimination of every subsidy, tax deduction and tax credit out there. No exceptions. This would eliminate one of the worst sources of pork-barrel spending, prevent corrupt politicians from awarding businesses with big giveaways, and most importantly, it would make our economic system free, fair, and simple.
Since this will never occur, I will support any reform that comes closer to this goal, by eliminating whatever goodies we can.
Good Morning,
...it would increase the incentive to earn more income...
I don't think there could be more "incentive" to earn more than our own liberty already provides. If there are no white collar jobs to be found, the alternative is unemployment.
This may have been an effective incentive in job markets of yore, where you could get a job, and it was "your" job, and there was little churning of the job market in order to depress wages. Then you could decide what you wanted to spend your life doing, and train to do it, and expect to hold a job for a lifetime, and receive a pension to fund your old age.
Now, by the time you've studied your way thru college, the profession you have selected is either impacted, or flown to India. You are expected to switch jobs early and often. If you don't, you are labeled complacent.
In this job market, where you are only working until you get laid off and they can hire a younger cheaper worker in 3 years, the incentive is false and the hope for improvement is illusory.
The government does not need to dangle incentives for the american worker: we have the most productive workforce on the planet.
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. But we can't have both." ________Louis Brandeis
I used to think like this, too.
It ignores one tiny detail, all that stuff was put there because it served a strong enough good to some constituency that it's going to stay in place no matter what. Eliminate it now, it will creep back in sooner or later. The Reagan era was when I was most passionately in favor of such reforms. They were partially put in place, and then eroded away under this Republican Congress.
- oddjob
Good morning, Chris Meyer, and welcome to The Dark Wraith Forums.
Your comment has quite a few different issues to address, but I must teach here in a while, so I'll touch a couple now and some others later.
First, let's deal with the idea that a higher savings rate in the present creates more robust consumption later. This is a standard demonstration these days in some principles of macroeconomics textbooks. It has to do with what can be graphed as two separate but related production possibilities frontiers: the first represents the trade-off between current consumption and current savings; the second represents a future production possibilities frontier depicting two composite consumption goods. The theory goes that, as current consumption is traded off for more and more savings, the result will be a translation outward of the second production possibilities frontier.
If you are familiar with social history, you might note the curious relationship between this hypothesis and the related Protestant ethic that was dominant in the thinking of the Classical economists of the Austrian School in the 19th and 20th Centuries. It is no coincidence that the economics being developed and handed down to students of the modern era was heavily influenced—infused, even—by deeper religious and social values serving as subtext and guidance.
Now to the point of the hypothesis: there is no doubt that savings and consumption represent a trade-off in the short-run when income is held constant. That having been said, you must be prepared to state clearly what constitutes "consumption." As I point out in "Seven Principles of Macroeconomics", in a globalized economy, purchase of foreign goods is savings because the liquid capital (U.S. dollars) used to pay for the expenditures end up circulating back to the United States as capital investment. Americans buying imports are actually investing through the central banks of other countries, with the interest being reflected through exchange rates as lower prices Americans have to pay, and the principal balance being reclaimed as more or less a perpetuity in the long-term investments the foreign lenders finance.
Unfortunately, this is a case where simple doesn't work. Merely saying 'savings versus consumption' misses the overwhelming dimension that global exchange creates that causes consumption to actually end up being savings by another name. I alluded to that point in the my article mentioned above through the one section entitled "Foreign Toasters." Those cheap foreign goods are precisely the material compensation American purchasers of imports receive for the both the foregone consumption of domestic products and for the foregone control of the long-term capital that matches the short-term dollars.
This takes that bifurcated world of the future right off the table. Now, there are economists, politicians, and assorted social commentators who keep beating the drum that somehow we can force re-domestication of consumption and savings. That isn't going to happen in a world where the United States government runs chronically massive budget deficits: the enormous trade imbalance—and therefore, the strange way by which Americans "save" through consumption of imports—is the consequence of those deficits, not some tandem phenomenon. Instrumentalizing the tax code to punish consumption in a world such as ours is a system of trade barriers by another name: it is a return to Smoot-Hawley, and it will have the same effect. If we force people to stop consuming without repairing the underlying structural motivator of their rational actions, we are going to end up throwing the United States and the rest of the industrialized world into a deep, deep recession.
That national sales tax idea, bad as it is as a regressive tax on income, will serve the end of breaking the back of our appetite for imports, but that appetite for imports is being powered by revenue and expenditure decisions being made in Washington, D.C., not in some matrix of character flaws in the American people that makes them save too little and buy imports.
Now, let me address the old-time idea of short-term structural unemployment being a good thing in the long run because it forces a re-alignment of skill sets of American workers.
The hypothesis goes something like this: when the economy shifts from one production matrix that uses more labor as a factor of production to another production matrix that substitutes capital for labor as the preferred factor in the production, the resulting, so-called "structural unemployment" of labor might be bad in the short-run, but in the long run it forces labor to acquire more features that are complementary to the newly dominant physical capital. Hence, with a more refined skill set, the labor re-enters the market to command a higher wage rate based upon its complementarity with the physical capital that originally replaced it.
As a theoretical concept, this is fine; and even anecdotal historical evidence points to many, many examples of this proposition in action. A great example is how computers, particularly starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s, began to replace lots of people who had done the grunt work that computers were able to take over. The unemployment that resulted from this technological shift (not "improvement," just shift) was notable and widespread. Arguably, this story had a happy ending because, eventually, those computers needed complementary labor skills to operate them, so a new labor sub-market was born, with a robust labor demand curve for computer-literate office personnel.
The problem is this: the technology kept moving forward, and computers had a bad habit of needing fewer and fewer workers to maintain them as the technological drive for efficiency and productivity propelled companies to continue to invest in exactly the continuing technological shift that was disastrous to people: the computers became more and more sophisticated, and they required fewer and fewer human complements. Any anecdote about how the short-run unemployment caused by the computer age led to a new era of high-paying jobs for computer people should also include a footnote about how that whole job market is one giant fiasco here in the early 21st Century: the number of unemployed, under-employed, and mis-employed people with "computer skills" and computer degrees is staggering, and the situation is getting worse and worse.
Companies are profit maximizers. Labor is expensive; and the forward cost it imposes against corporate profits is enough to propel the computer industry to throw billions and billions of dollars every year into technology that replaces human capital with anything other than human capital.
Let's take the example of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). One of the many, many products coming out of that technology is tomatoes that have skins tough enough that they can be harvested with mechanical pickers. This means no more farm laborers need be pressed into service to harvest those tomatoes.
It's going to take an economist with a face of stone to keep from bursting out laughing hysterically while declaring that those people who used to pick those tomatoes are now in a position to go to college and get degrees in genetics so they can become complements to the GMO technology. And that goes for the children, and the children's children, of those displaced workers. This is what's called in development economics "emiserizing growth": the economy expands, but the technological shifts leave masses of human beings choking and permanently diminished in the dusty winds of change.
No, people don't just decide to become doctors and lawyers when they lose their jobs to machines. Their kids don't either: poverty and the mentality of defeat are handed down from one generation to the next, especially when, every time people try to get up on their feet again, the technology shifts under those feet.
Right now, I'm teaching kids whose fathers and mothers were factory workers now unemployed. I hear those kids telling me, "I'm going into computer stuff."
What do I tell them? "Yeah, that's the wave of the future."
Or do I tell them the double-bladed truth? "Dude, the jobs for computer people just aren't out there anymore. And besides, you grew up in a working class family, and I've already seen your math and logic skills; and they suck, not because you're a flawed human being, but because you were reared in a family that didn't cultivate those skills, and you went to a school in a state that spits on education at the very same moment the politicians preen around on stage talking about how important it is."
The world of the future is not some beast waiting to be tamed by our sacrificial savings in the here and now. We've been doing that, and it doesn't do any good to hand corporate America more lendable funds so they can have cheap capital to go out and further erode the future that awaits American labor. They've gotten just about everything they want, and still the future gets worse and worse for kids.
Using tax law to take away the here and now for some brighter tomorrow isn't going to solve the deep and growing problems of this country. All it's going to do is grease the road down which our handbasket is careening.
The Dark Wraith will return later.
As a former employee of CompuServe who lost her job due to the AOL buyout, it always seemed that the case presented by conservative economists that downsizing and export of jobs is good for Americans is just a high-end version of "Who Moved My Cheese?"- written largely to prevent laid-off workers from rioting, litigating, or torching their old offices on the way out the door.
On a different front, why is it assumed that only white collar jobs will be created when companies downsize by the addition of new technology? Even in the midst of the tech boom of the 1990's, there are tons of stories of tech people who worked long hours for little pay, and whose jobs were eliminated just as their companies became profitable. Check out the book NetSlaves: True Tales of Working the Web
wow! dark one.....what would you suggest the young, semi-priveleged do other than 'computer stuff'?
i'm big on the mental health field as the woprld seems to be slowly going insane.;-)
Good afternoon, Lenin's Ghost.
What would I suggest the young, semi-priveleged do?
Move.
The Dark Wraith prepares the travel guide.
Dark Wraith,
If Mr. Meyer comes back this thread might end up being known as The Education of Mr. Meyer.
Auntie Roo is interested in seeing how this unfolds.
Auntie Roo:
:-)
- oddjob
Here (in its way) is another example of why the Austrian School's model of untrammelled capitalism is not the way to go:
Exxon has never - to this very day! - paid its civil penalty obligation to the town & people of Cordova, AK
(- Hat tip, The Culture Ghost.)
- oddjob
That's why progressives such as Teddy Roosevelt & Franklin Roosevelt had a case to make, and they still do.
Years ago, I lived in a town that wanted to build a new library. The question of whether or not to raise the funds and pay for bonds with a local sales tax was placed on the ballot, and people voted on it. It passed overwhelmingly.It is always nice to know exactly what your tax dollars are buying. In Colorado back in the 90's, a ballot initiative to amend the state constitution passed, requiring the government to refund any tax surplus in the budget.It's always nice to know exactly how much money they really need to run the government. I think it would be a bad idea to move the sales tax into the Federal arena...
"In other words, the modern American business model has had as one of its clear goals the use of physical capital as a "substitute," not a "complement," for labor, meaning that Americans pouring money into savings accounts are going to accelerate the industrial shift that has for years been progressively and deliberately degrading and diminishing the jobs market in the U.S."
I would have to argue that while on the surface, and in some regards, this looks/is bad it's not all bad. Chris Myers had the unrealistic assumption that this shifts all those displaced workers into the white collar world. This is not so. But I would argue that the shift that would happen could very well justify the pain of that job loss. Not all those who are displaced by machines would in fact find reasonable substitute employment. However, the end result of mass unemployment (something I happen to advocate) would be one of two things, probably both. 1. Bloody revolution in the streets. As more lose their jobs, the burden of taxation required to provide there basic needs is placed on a shrinking tax base - less people paying for more subsidies. This will cause a major cutback in services provided - i.e. less health care, more hunger and less shelter. People need these things for survival. If you try to take them away along with the ability to get them you will have revolution. This is a historical fact and while society is softer today, you try to tell someone they can't provide for their children and therefore their children along with them will die of starvation and exposure and see how fast it gets bloody. The brighter side of this equation is that the cost of production is lowered to a point it becomes negligible. The more we automate the lower prices will be forced by straight need. The push will be for 2. Further and further re-distribution of wealth. Remarkably, the neo-con agenda of greed which would in fact cause a dramatic push towards the culmination of that which the neo-cons find most abhorrent - socialism. To be specific democratic socialism. The one nation that comes closest to this - the real dream of Marx and Engles, despite it's lack of social medicine, is in fact the United States of America. What is lacking to push this closer to fruition is in fact the mechanization of more and more "meaningless" labor. If a machine can perform the task, and there are few they can't, then having humans performing that labor is by definition dehumanizing. When you push people to perform tasks with the same accuracy and precision of a machine you are pushing them to be - less human.
In factories, fast food restaurants and a host of other employment venues - including many "white collar" jobs, we find the most valuable natural resource on the planet, human minds, wasting away needlessly. I believe it is time to reap the benefit promised us with the industrial and then the techno revolutions - time. Time to be and contribute to society the best of what we have to offer - not what we can learn in the limited time allotted most of us before we have to seek provision for ourselves and family. I have met many online and off who waste their lives at jobs that could be performed better and faster by machines - meanwhile their sometimes genius level brilliance is squandered, for what? Eventually there could in fact be the realization of Mr. Myers ideal - the employment would be displaced in far more valuable ways.
Some would argue that some people would be compelled to do nothing productive. This is true - so what? If they want to sit around watching TV, smoking joints and F*cking, let them. Who cares? They will dwindle and die and then they are gone. Respect and special privilege would become the currency of life. The desire to be - something - would motivate most people to learn and be and do. Over time the aforementioned would become an anachronism.
I am not saying that democratic socialism is the end all perfect system - in fact Marx didn't either - but it is a step in the right direction. Eventually as society grows with an increasingly leveled playing field, the result would in fact be a responsible anarchy. I really don't know if society will in fact survive and grow out of capitalism - I just hope beyond reckoning that we will. But then it may just be a pipe dream. Those who want nothing more than to sit around, smoke joints, watch TV and f*ck may just have the right idea - I sincerely hope not.
DuWayne
AKA
Treban
Danged, Treban, you disappear, and then you make a pretty good stab at a grand re-appearance with that last comment.
The Dark Wraith welcomes you back.
Thank you Dark Wraith, I have been very busy with my move but things are setteling enough for me to come out once in a while.
It wasn't meant to be a harsh stab, I just can't get over my love of Marx. I tried, in high school I decided to go out with Rand for a while but when it comes down to it the ends the same - and Carl is a lot warmer than that Ice Queen Ayn.
Those who want nothing more than to sit around, smoke joints, watch TV and f*ck may just have the right idea - I sincerely hope not.
DuWayne
AKA
Treban
Damn! I didn't know that was an option! :)
Good evening, Old White Lady.
I think that has something to do with the marketing paradigm of "consumer sovereignty."
The Dark Wraith wishes there were a way to package the product.
[Lord, I'd be richer than Bill Gates.]
And why in tarnation is it that these threads almost inevitably take on a life of their own?
The Dark Wraith is convinced that this blog has achieved some kind of autonomous consciousness.
Why thank you Auntie Roo. I always appreciate education. I'm quite new to economics and I still have a childlike curiosity for it.
Dark Wraith, you said some things that I found quite thought-provoking. First, your response to the effects that sales tax has on consumption--that purchase of foreign goods is savings. My understanding of how such a tax affects consumption was complicated to begin with, and now it is even more so. I'm not sure what to make of it--so I won't.
The comparison with Smoot-Hawley is quite compelling and I had not thought of the issue in that way, and since I am such a firm opponent of protectionist measures, I think this has leaned me slightly more toward a flat income tax rather than a flat sales tax.
It's also quite compelling to think about the Protestant ethic that was infused into economic teaching. But I am not automatically led to believe this ethic being infused is a negative thing. Do you think it is?
Now, on to the juicier topic of how technology affects employment.
I do not advocate the theory you presented and criticize.
I would not declare that "those people who used to pick those tomatoes are now in a position to go to college and get degrees in genetics so they can become complements to the GMO technology."
That's not how it works.
My theory is more like this. We have just accomplished a more efficient and cheaper way of producing tomatoes. Now tomatoes are cheaper for everyone. Other people, uninvolved in the tomato-making process, now spend less of their income on the tomatoes they're buying, meaning they have more disposable income to spend on other things. Once they've reached their basic need of food, for instance, they might be able to spend money, on, say, a book, helping to create new job opportunities for authors and publishers.
Technology and change often have adverse affects on those they immediately displace. And I would not necessarily try to argue that those displaced will still somehow be better off. The tomato pickers will not likely move on to work at white collar jobs.
But think, if you will, about the effects a mechanization of the tomato industry would have on humanity as a whole.
Humanity is able to produce more tomatoes with fewer (human) resources. This increase in productivity means an increase in wealth. The wealth goes somewhere. Part of it might go to inventors, farm owners, and tomato buyers, in the form of lower prices.
This new wealth will eventually be spent on something. Perhaps even more investment into tomatoes. Perhaps a mansion for the inventor. Perhaps more spaghetti at fancy restaurants.
New, completely different jobs are created by the new wealth, perhaps a couple in different areas of the tomato industry, as the theory you presented might suggest, but others for waiters and construction workers.
Since jobs once done by humans are now done by machines, that means that more human labor is available toward other aims.
In regions with large immigrant populations, like the Southwest and Florida, it can translate into more gardeners, more nannies, to people that might otherwise stay home with their kids or have barren lawns.
Or it can translate into a large group of young people that realizes that there is less of a future for unskilled labor, which makes it more imperative to get the skills they need to work for jobs that are demanded.
Think about the world only a couple centuries ago, when more than 90% of all humanity worked in agriculture. New technology massively increased agricultural productivity, and today around 1-2% of Americans work in agriculture, a number that continues to shrink. Hundreds of millions of people had to be displaced during that time, many, presumably, without many skills outside of agriculture.
They adapted. When the supply of agricultural workers exceeded the demand for them, they moved to other fields that demanded them.
The urban revolution would have never occurred without these advancements that displaced so many people. Most of the things we enjoy about our lifestyle wouldn't.
The situation we have today is no different, except that we live in it, and we know or might be those people that are displaced.
There is nothing unique about the revolution in computer technology vs. agricultural technology or any other technological advancement we have ever had. The same thing you said about computers taking over all the jobs could be said of tractors--they did replace nearly all the agricultural jobs. So as all the jobs are taken, what to do people who had them do? They move to something else. What will they move to? Whatever is demanded.
As long as humans keep making more demands, humans will always have jobs. And humans are seldom satiated--they will always demand more. If we reach a point where nothing is demanded anymore, then, well, we won't really need to work for anything anymore.
The difference between what I am saying here and what the theory you mentioned suggested is that I am not saying that when technology eliminates a need for labor, it also creates a different need for labor. A technology might totally eliminate such a need. And the more it does so the better.
"the number of unemployed, under-employed, and mis-employed people with "computer skills" and computer degrees is staggering, and the situation is getting worse and worse."
My first response is to dispute part of this. The unemployment has stayed 5-6% over the last several years, a very comfortable rate, especially when compared to the other industrial countries in the world, many with 10-15% unemployment rates. I find it difficult to believe that a disproportionate number are skilled in computers.
My second response is, so what? Supply exceeds demand. We no longer need as many computer techies. So people drop out of the field, get "misemployed," and fewer people go in, and choose a different field, say, economics--we can never have too many economists right?
It happens all the time.
Dark Wraith, if I am to interpret what you are suggesting, do you really mean to imply that more technology to reduce the need for human labor is a bad thing? Would you rather that such technology should be stymied so that the present employment balance can be maintained?
If we wanted everyone to always be employed, we could have the government pay them to do something useless, like, say, dig holes and then put the dirt back in and repeat. That is, essentially, what one would be advocating by saying that instead of improving and adopting technology, we should just have humans do the work instead. You are having them do something useless, unnecessary.
Oddjob--just because reforms might be eroded is not a reason to not advocate them. Our laws inevitably need cleaning, it should not discourage you.
Duwayne--
"Chris Myers had the unrealistic assumption that this shifts all those displaced workers into the white collar world. This is not so."
Not all the displaced workers go into the white collar world, something I failed to mention in my first post but mentioned here with the example of tomato workers shifting to gardening and nannying, otherwise undemanded jobs.
But while industrial shifts don't bring all displaced workers into the white collar world, no one would have been brought into the white collar world had these shifts not occurred--we'd all be food gatherers. And the more shifts occur, the larger the white collar community becomes.
This is empirically demonstrated through history. The industrial revolution largely created the middle class, and as information and technology have constantly improved, the white collar class has continued to grow, to the point that it dominates today's society.
This is not without its disadvantages. It is largely because of the continued growth of the white collar class, and the continued decline of the blue collar one, that we have such a large income disparity in this nation. Put another way, the gap between unskilled workers and skilled ones continues to expand. Skilled workers get paid more and unskilled workers get paid less.
But it is still, I must maintain, quite worth it. Progress should not be impeded by fear of change.
Spoken like a true Austrian School economist.
The Robber Barons of the Gilded Age (& also Karl Rove & Grover Norquist) would be proud.
- oddjob
The problem with your thinking is it synonymizes human lives with machinery as things to be discarded in the trash heap when no longer wanted, an immoral value if ever there was one.
- oddjob
And that, in its soul, is why your infusion of a particular strain of Protestant ethics, ie. an un-Christianly, viciously crude Calvinist one, is simply unacceptable and always has been.
- oddjob
will we have to retrain those ex-tomato growing humans in tomato growing when the shortage of petroleum cuts drastically into industrialized farming? just because a machine can do something that doesn't make that something "dehumanizing." the intrinsically centralized nature of modern mechanized and standardized agriculture makes it vulnerable to disruption by a shortage of input energy--read oil--and by plant pathogens. ask the irish what happens when everyone plants the same strain of potato and so all the potatoes grown get the same disease.
Here's a couple of observations:
The unemployment has stayed 5-6% over the last several years, a very comfortable rate....
- the rate that the Govt publishes is not the true rate - it's only the rate of those who are receiving benefits. There are many more people who are not employed, but their benefits have run out.
It also does not count those who are underemployed, like my stepson, who graduated with a business degree and who now does collections. Or my neice, who graduated with a degree in music, and cannot find a job as a music teacher, because all the schools have cut so far back on "unessentials" that there are no music courses in the schools (and this is Connecticut - one of the more affluent states)
Would you rather that such technology should be stymied so that the present employment balance can be maintained?
No, I love technology, I just think that the people in charge should
think of what they are doing, and put some money into real progress, and real training; before we end up a third world country, with a third world mindset and a third rate economy.
I read the other day that every baby born now has a $150,000.00 bill to pay, complements of the defecit spending of our oligarchy. The crash is coming, it's going to be worse than the great depression; and the idiots in power are either too dense to see it - or, they are doing it to us on purpose. They want cannon fodder.
Think what 300 billion dollars could have done to our economy if the powers that be had spent it on alternative energy and infrastructure, instead of war.
But we have a president who glories in his C average, thinks that armageddon would be a good thing, and wants to go steady with an arabian prince.
Is there any way out of this wilderness besides going thru hell?
These are the times that demand a Wraith for a guide....
Good Morning Dread Pirate.
Not to mention that tomatos with skins so thick that they can be harvested by machine are not the tomatos that I long for -
in thick slabs, warm from the sun, between layers of bread slathered with mayo!
...with thin - sliced spam on the side!
Uuhhh, Wraith,
Considering those short dissertations by oddjob, dread pirate roberts, and sb gypsy, we've decided it's okay for you to take a little time off if you so choose. The blog appears to be in good hands.
Why do people like Chris assume that only high-end, "white collar" jobs are created through our "tech revolution"? As a former Information Technology employee, (who is now working in the manufacturing sector as an optical lens coating technician) my jobs in I.T. never paid that well, although I greatly prefer that area of work. For every highly paid programmer, there are far more in the "pink-collar ghettos" of customer service, sales and Level One technical support. It doesn't take much to see that computer repair specialists will soon be where auto mechanics are now- and do you really want to be at the forefront of the next generation of grease monkeys?
I've worked part-time for many years as a banquet server at a major hotel here in town, and about a third of the staff are college educated people like me, some with advanced degrees, that can't get established in their areas of study, or find that they make more money here than in their fields. I've consistently made more as a server than in my professional work (from $14 to $17 per hour, sometimes more), so don't assume that education provides the competive edge. (I've been asked why I don't banquet server full time- the answer is, look at the people who have done so for 25 to 30 years. Most full timers are having surgery for knee, foot and/or back problems. Thanks but no thanks.)
Chris Meyers, You missed my point. I firmly believe that the labor best suited for machines should be done by machines. I was not trying to be critical but making the point that you had in your initial comment marked the shift in employment only to the white collar sector. In fact, the point I was trying to make is that I would like to see mechanization increase to the point that employment shifting cannot possibly keep up. I would love to se mass unemployment. In the short term this would brutalize a large portion of the population but in the long term I believe that we would shift ever further towards democratic socialism. It is akin to my desire to see the price of oil go so high as to be prohibitive. It hurts my wallet right now - and belive me my wallet is thin already - but in the long term it forces more focus on alternative energy. Thus the ends justify the means.
Dread Pirate Roberts,
I present you with my answer to the mechanized agri. As a theoretical excersize I designed a "plant" (no pun intended) that could be built on a river. The river would provide hydro-power. The facility would have a footprint of about 75 acres with several levels above and below ground. The machinery to tend the food production would be in the ceilings with catwalks for the occasional human to inspect the works and repair machines as necc. The entire floor could be devoted to plnting without thought to spacing for machine or people.
Initialy I designed it to grow food only. Soil and seed in one end one time produce out the other indefinately. I then expanded to include preperation of foods to come out the other end instead of just produce.
The next step was to discover just what technologies would still need to be developed to create such a facility. The remarkable thing I discovered was - there were none. All the tech necassary to build such a facility exist now. Infact with only minor changes in software that exists now even the programing exists to make this facility possible. In nearly every way it could be self sufficient. Even packaging made with plants grown inside could be made. After the initial crop the fertilizers needed and seeds would also be there.
This is just one example of tech sans petrol that could be performed with little to no human intervention. The neat thing about this idea to me is it also could beget expieremental facilities to develope multi-gen colony ships for interstellar travel. Sorry Dark Wraith - I'll stop proggressing further away than I already have.
DuWayne
Oh shoot the other point - DP Roberts, The reason I find most labor that can be done by machines dehumanizing is this. Man is a creature of thoughts and Ideas. Pushing a button or pulling tomatoes off the vine is not often conducive to Ideas - the most valuable of human traits. I'm not saying one can't have ideas while doing hard labor - believe me I do it all the time - it's just that6 by the end of the day one whos done hard labor has little energy to put those thoughts and ideas to any positive use. Thus thew dehumanizing factor 1. The second is that many laborors live under the threat of being replaced by machines if they don't work faster and better. Bing told to perform as well as machines is by it's nature dehumanizing.
DuWayne
Hey Treban,
Glad to see you here again!
I was going to say - you could make that factory into a space installation. I firmly believe that the answer to our coming widespread famines is to put our food production into space. Large toruses could produce veggies and fish, and allow more space on earth for humans (or wilderness - a better alternative in my mind).
This is one of the things that 30 Billion dollars could have helped to fund. Oh well, oil is more important (not).
It could be the ultimate gypsy caravan, don't you think?
SPECIAL COMMENT:
Good afternoon, good people.
I have been in the back room today cleaning up a mess that Blogger created. Even though I use that wretch of a service only to publish the articles and comments, it managed to wipe out about the last fourth of the code for this blog when I published the weekly poll this morning. It seems Blogger doesn't like to do too much work, and if a blog has more than a small amount of code, Blogger simply doesn't upload whatever amount goes over its limit.
Anyway, I rewrote the code to make it a little less taxing for upload, and I took the liberty of making a couple of tweaks, as well. One of them you're going to notice, and it might be a bit disconcerting at first; but rest assured, it should have a slight advantage over the old way.
Here's what you'll notice. From now on, when you click the "POST A COMMENT" link, the "Leave your comment" page will open in its own window instead of dragging the main browser to that page. This means you can post your comments, then close the "Leave your comments" window, and you'll be back on the main blog right where you were. You can click the "Refresh the Home Blog" link, and the blog will refresh so you can see the it with your newly published comment included. (Obviously, right when you close the "Leave your comment" page, you'll be seeing the blog as it was before you published your comment.)
I am hopeful that this doesn't cause too much aggravation. It's partly an efficiency matter, and it's partly a matter of making the technical dynamics of The Dark Wraith Forums a bit more like those of other services like HaloScan.
The Dark Wraith will return a bit later to re-join this comment thread in earnest.
Good Afternoon Dark Wraith,
My goodness, it works! (how sexy - new technology)
oops, when I clicked on main blog refresh, I got a page chock full of HTML, and a blinding white! aack!
The Dark Wraith will return a bit later to re-join this comment thread in earnest.
The Dark Wraith locks and loads.
In the meantime, Oddjob here's something for you.
Appears to be working here, too.
- oddjob
Ah, if only Mr. Goat!
- oddjob
ok I tried 3 times to get the html page again, and it's working fine. who knows?
My Pet Goat : lol that's a great pic!
Uh-oh, SB_Gypsy.
I'm going to try to recreate what you're seeing.
The Dark Wraith continues his tradition of thundering incompetence as a code writer.
Good afternoon, once again.
I'm running a comment through Firefox this time to see if I can recreate the disaster SB_Gypsy is getting.
The Dark Wraith prepares for the worst.
Okay, Firefox did the trick okay.
Next up is to simulate an overrun the Firefox cache. That was what was causing the same kind of mess Phoenician was seeing awhile back.
Here goes nuthin'.
Bingo!
Cache overrun makes the blog come out a ruined mess of code.
Now, that normally won't happen with Webpages in Firefox because it will just show an old version of the page that it has in its cache. However, on this blog, I have meta-tags at the very top of the code page that prevent browsers from using cached versions of the blog. The reason is to keep visitors from seeing the page as it was several days before and thereby assuming no articles or comments have been posted in the since their last visit.
The Dark Wraith will now quickly run through Netscape and Opera to make sure it's other wise working okay.
Good afternoon, once again.
Netscape and Opera both take the new trick without a hitch. However, if I cannot get a resolution of the Firefox difficulty, I'll probably back off and return the code to the old way of comment page loading.
SB_Gypsy: Let me know if this problem is persisting. You'll obviously have to do a couple of posts to see. And by the way, I genuinely appreciate you letting me know of the difficulty. Even though I can predict some effects, I just cannot on my own run every possibility; as such, I depend upon everyone here to tell me when I've gone too far in my misguided inspirations.
As a final note on this little episode, I do have a new feature in the works. It's something I hope folks will like and use. The unveiling will come some time within the next few days or so.
The Dark Wraith awaits SB_Gypsy's results.
Oddjob-- Actually, I always considered myself much more of a Keynesian than an Austrian. But whatever.
"The problem with your thinking is it synonymizes human lives with machinery as things to be discarded in the trash heap when no longer wanted, an immoral value if ever there was one."
I don't believe that I synonymize human lives with machinery at all. My goal is to improve the most human lives, and machines, while causing displacement for some, aid that goal overall.
So, it's immoral discard people when they are no longer wanted. What, precisely, would you have done with them? Should a boss that no longer needs a worker not be allowed to ever fire him?
I have no idea what this has to do with the protestant ethic we were talking about. We were talking about the protestant ethic of saving. Human value seems to have nothing to do with that.
To be clear I don't think the protestant ethic being infused is either a good or bad thing, just a curious one, like Dark Wraith said.
Dread Pirate Roberts--Bringing the peak oil phenomenon into the equation changes things quite considerably. Our technological infrastructure will have a difficult time indeed handling the shortage. This is a viable argument against expanding technological infrastructure. Other reasons presented thus far in this forum are not.
We seem to have developped a good handle on agricultural pathogens since the Irish famine of the 1840s, and I'm not very worried about them. Am I wrong not to?