House of Eratosthenes

Saturday, at 11:02PDT, Carl who is the CEO and chief-cook and bottle-washer at Simply Left Behind made it clear to me that he has “a degree in finance and accounting” and “can probably argue rings around” me with regard to the effect of the minimum wage upon unemployment. Carl’s reading comprehension needs work. The point I made eleven days ago, which he wanted to challenge, had to do with how liberals argue versus how real people argue, citing the minimum wage as an example. Like an ostrich sticking its head in the ground, liberals will avoid the intellectual confrontation by turning to studies. Conservatives, overall, are undaunted by the prospect of examining human behavior and how it works. They’ll say “I buy something, you raise the price of that thing, I’ll either stop buying, buy fewer, or put work into finding an alternative,” thereby predicting the behavior of people-at-large, by examining their own. This is powerful. It “pulls rank” on a study. If a study somewhere says people will pay extra for something with no resistance at all, when it’s known that people will dig deeper to produce more money only as a solution of last resort, then it’s the study that’s placed into doubt, not the behavior of people.

So you can hardly fault Carl for, right after bragging about being able to argue circles around me, going to great lengths to avoid doing exactly that. One minute (assuming I’m converting the time zones correctly, which seems logical) after extolling the virtues of his accounting degree and his forensic prowess, he logged on to KEvron’s blog and announced,

KEv,

I got a live one for you…

http://mkfreeberg.blogspot.com

And one minute after that, the call went out once again at some place called “Poetic Justice”…

Cletus!

Ah gots a laiv one fer yew…

http://mkfreeberg.blogspot.com

Whereupon Cletus thought to himself “oh no it’s that jackass Carl again” and turned out the lights, drew the blinds and hid. Or something.

Distress? Well, I don’t know about that last part. Cletus is a no-show, KEvronius (upside-down American flag guy) is not. KEvron, springing forward, genie-like, from the magic lamp toted around by Carl, to show us the arguing skills Carl uses to run circles around people, has been highly entertaining. For example he took me on when I said…

A conservative says “you sell X many widgets at $4 a pop, and Y many at $5, Y is bound to be less than X.” This is a simple economic truism.

…and corrected me with this gem:

very simple, indeed. however, your analogy ius [sic] flawed: in raising the minimum wage, x is no longer a consideration.

as for your “11% versus 12%”, it’s only relevant in a presidential election. that anomolous [sic] 1% may decide all seats, some seats or only one seat, no way of knowing. but you should expect dem gains to excede [sic] losses this year. that’s for house, senate and governor seats.

I should expect something because KEvron says it’s what I should expect. Nothing to back it up. I should take his word for it and trust his judgment, even though he can’t spell “anomalous,” “exceed,” or even “is.”

On his mistake with the minimum wage, I’m inclined to cut him some slack. My original example had to do with an employer wanting to hire 4 recent high-school graduates at $6.75 an hour, being forced to hire only three of them and send the fourth one home, when the minimum wage was hiked to $8.50. This is a simple math problem. Old quantity, 4; old price, 6.75; new price, 8.50; new quantity, 3. That the minimum wage increase results in someone being unemployed, who otherwise would not be, was a secondary point. My primary point was, that the situation is solidly defined with simple arithmetic. The intellectual pursuits at play, are not sufficiently complicated to demand studies — benefits and payroll costs aside, those pursuits are multiplication and subtraction. Elementary-school math. This is the primary point: “Studies” are raised, not to cover arcane academic subjects with the refined scrutinizing power we can muster only from the highest echelons of our educational system…but instead, to muddy up a situation that isn’t that complicated to begin with. In my example, that is this: What exactly is 4 times $8.50?

KEvron says, when a price is raised from $4/widget to $5/widget, so that I buy Y at $5/ea. instead of X at $4/ea., “in raising the minimum wage, x is no longer a consideration.” X is the old quantity, so what he’s saying is that the new rule has rendered quantity irrelevant. Taking his words literally, and using them to resolve the minimum wage conundrum, what we’re eliminating from consideration is the 4. So the only way I can reconcile that, is that yes the 4th high school graduate is, indeed, being sent home to circle want ads, but KEvron is directing us not to think about that because the 4th job never existed to begin with.

Gee, real compassionate there KEv.

No seriously, I think what he meant to say is that it’s the old price, the $4 (or, to stick to a consistent example, the $6.75/hr) that “is no longer a consideration.” That is what is being outlawed when the minimum is raised. X, the higher quantity, is just something made impossible because of the higher unit price. So I guess in the final analysis he’s really agreeing with me, just doing it by getting his math factors confused and misspelling lots of things.

Now then, on to something meatier and worthy of being chewed-on. KEvronius has found something else he doesn’t like here, and that is my addition to a long and growing list of opinionated folks both within and outside of the blogosphere, who bristle at Superman’s brand-new crusade for “truth, justice, and all that other stuff.” KEvron does his intellectual battle on behalf of Carl and Carl’s accounting degree, with that most powerful of forensic tools, the Eighth Pillar of Persuasion, the rhetorical question: “and what, exactly, is this ‘american way’ that superman should fight for it?”

Wow, wow and double-wow. I know what’s being expected of me here, I’m supposed to go “homina homina homina” and backpedal, wishing I had never opined to begin with, for I have no answer to this question. In this enterprise, I’m afraid I must disappoint. The American Way is something well worth defending, and Superman’s latest storytellers did him a great disservice by withdrawing him from this noble crusade.

Let’s examine, first of all, one of America’s most significant embarrassments of late, the mistreatment of prisoners in connection to the War on Terror. In April of 2004, CBS’ 60 Minutes II broke the story of a prison scandal involving the mistreatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison at the hands of U.S. service members. Bad on the United States. What got considerably less press, was that the military was already investigating this internally. So the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, which is American, is compiling their findings-of-fact of the misdeeds performed at the hands of American servicemembers. And then CBS, an American network, also investigates the shenanigans. The Criminal Investigation Command acts as an independent arm, not beholden to anyone who shares in the fate of
those other Americans who might be guilty…and of course, CBS is completely independent of the whole thing. So what you have here, is Americans misbehaving, and then getting tattled on by other Americans, who, in turn, have absolutely no incentive to hold anything back.

It’s got to do with people in positions of power, being accountable. Now, contrast that with the system of government from which we declared our Independence in 1776. The King of Great Britain, and the Parliament…squabble. They argue about who has the power to do what, sometimes the monarch wins, most of the time Parliament wins. Everyone who isn’t in Parliament, and isn’t part of the Royal Family…just watches. Oh and you can vote for your MP when he comes up for election — but not if you’re in the American Colonies. And when the dust is settled, whoever ends up with all the power, well, they use it. They pass Ex Poste Facto laws, they pass Bills of Attainder including Corruption of Blood, they tax goods being traded in the Colonies, at whatever figure they want to pull out of their collective asses — while the Colonies watch. Power, without accountability.

Our left-wingers say President Bush is powerful without being accountable. This is poppycock. The man can’t choke on a potato chip without it being front-page news. The Supreme Court rules military tribunals to be illegal, and even though the decision stands common sense on its own head, it is beyond challenge. Love the decision or hate it, the Supreme Court is the final word, and they are completely unbeholden to the Executive Branch. We get to scrutinize every potential entanglement they have with one another. Dick Cheney goes duck hunting with Antonin Scalia, and it’s front-page news.

Some will protest that the Supreme Court actually isn’t all that independent, that the jurists on that bench actually go very far to ingratiate themselves with the liberal intelligentsia inside the beltway and inside the academic institutions. Hey, the system isn’t perfect. But the point is, no single pair of hands contains all the power. You achieve power through public trust, and the public purse, and swear an oath to the public, and suddenly you’re accountable to a gazillion different watchdogs, some of them inside the government, some working from the press…which, in turn, has complete protection from the First Amendment.

Powers are separated. Congress can’t outlaw Morgan Freeberg. Congress can outlaw, let’s say, chicken-smuggling across state lines…Morgan Freeberg can then smuggle chickens…and the Executive Branch can come after Morgan Freeberg. Even then, the Executive has to wait for the law to be passed, and then for Morgan Freeberg to break it. For Congress to observe me doing something Congress doesn’t like, and then to pass a law against it so that I can be busted for it, is unconstitutional. If the Executive sees me doing something that may run afoul of something passed by our legislature, but it’s a matter of opinion, then after I’m busted for it I can bring the matter before the judiciary, which answers to neither law enforcement nor to the legislature.

Congress cannot interpret its own laws. This protects other people who are not Morgan Freeberg, in the event Morgan Freeberg happens to be a really cool guy whose approval Congress craves for some reason. Congress cannot pass that law against chicken-smuggling, and then after I’m caught smuggling chickens, say “Uh…what we meant to say, when we passed that law, was you can’t smuggle chickens at night. Yeah, that’s what we meant, that’s the ticket. Morgan was smuggling chickens at three in the afternoon, and that’s not what we wanted to outlaw. Sorry if we were unclear. Case dismissed.”

No, Congress writes the laws…the Judiciary, in the event the laws need to be interpreted, does the interpreting. These powers are separated. All countries, even in the modern world, don’t necessarily operate that way. In other countries, officials who hold the police power of the state, exercise it in ways to ingratiate themselves with the powerful, at the expense of the oppressed. Now you might say some people in America get away with that…the system isn’t perfect…but we have a lot of machinery put in place to prevent that. A lot. And every little bit helps some.

A worthy battle for Superman?

Well, I would say so, although it’s a matter of opinion. But there is more.

I can do things that are stupid. I can do things that get people upset. If these things are not illegal, I have a perfect right to do them. But I have more than the law on my side. I have a uniquely American culture that says I have the right to do these things.

Oh sure, I like to go to Hooters, and there’s a whole bunch of loudmouthed advocacy groups that say the franchise exploits women and I shouldn’t be allowed to go. But they get no traction here. And deep down, even the people who agree with those noisy advocacy groups, understand the groups that have earned their sympathy, are trying to decide something that is out of their control and should be out of their control. It’s a deeply-rooted thing in America: Before you say someone should stop doing something, you need to be defining how it’s any skin off your nose if they keep on doing it. And even then, when you tell them to stop, you should be defining by what authority you’re telling them to stop.

From abolition to prohibition to don’t-eat-meat to don’t-attend-a-bikini-contest, an advocacy group in America is essentially a salesman; elsewhere, such an advocacy group is a lobbyist. The salesman may make whatever contacts he wishes to, but he still needs approval before the new rules he wants, are binding on anyone. Powers, in this land, are derived “from the consent of the governed.”

Contrast that with places like Andalusia, Spain, where the noisy advocacy groups get to tell the department stores, your mannequins are too tall and skinny and might be giving women eating disorders. Other countries are lacking in America’s “leave it alone if it’s none of your beeswax” culture…and said advocacy groups end up getting their way. Other noisy advocacy groups, in countries like, say, Sweden, can write a screeching manifesto or two, announcing that men must relinquish their privileges because those privileges are resulting in the subordination of women. Not to say you can’t write the same thing here. But again, because of the M.Y.O.B. culture, you aren’t going to get very far with it here. By and large, in America, everyone over whom you seek to exert power, is going to have something to say about whether or not you get that power. This isn’t true all the world over.

Should Superman fight for that? I think so.

If you invent something and make a lot of money off of it, and I think you made too much, and you should be forced to give some of it away, that’s just tough — if it happens in America.

If you say something I find offensive and I want you arrested as an example to others who might be inclined to say the same thing, I have got a real uphill battle ahead of me — if it happens in America.

If you’re a homeowner, and I’m an Army officer leading my men on patrol, and I want to quarter my men in your house, I am constitutionally prohibited from doing such a thing without your express consent — if we’re talking about America.

As far as helping the underdog, we’re on the honor system here. Our taxes are lower, and this helps to keep charity ingrained in American culture. By and large, if an American has the resources, and sees someone in genuine need of assistance, the assistance will be forthcoming. Americans have a well-deserved reputation for generosity there. In other countries, it’s pretty hard to avoid the “I gave at the office” attitude because…well, in other countries, the potential good Samaritan did give at the office. You can make a very modest livelihood, and still be called upon to kick in 55% or more. When government is out of money, the tax increase is just a matter of time, but of course if the people are left insolvent and the government treasury is bursting, don’t count on a tax cut. That only works in one direction. America’s government is just as greedy as any other government, but we have the inherent hostility to taxes built deeply into our culture. We don’t trust what government will do with the money. The notion that government is incorruptible, and private enterprise is up to a bunch of shenanigans and skulduggery, is embraced by some, sure…we call them what they are, a bunch of hard-core, left-leaning extreme pinko commie liberals. In other countries, what these hard-core left-leaning liberals believe, is called “centrist.” In America, you have to prove the government needs it before the government can have it — in other countries, you have to prove YOU need it before you can keep any of it.

Superman fighting for people to keep their property? Superman fighting for people to be free of an oppressive government? Natural a fit as chocolate chips on ice cream, as mustard on a hot dog.

Superman Doesn't Get His Ass Kicked Lastly, let’s not forget the value of hard work. Superman…is the man. He doesn’t get his ass kicked, for he cannot afford to have it kicked. When did you ever watch an episode of Superfriends, and observe Superman whipping out a cell phone or a walkie-talkie and say “Attention Aquaman, I need backup…this rock-mountain-monster is just too tough for me, I need you to fill in.” Not gonna happen. If Superman doesn’t have what it takes to save the day, we are ALL screwed. No other country on the face of the earth, satisfies this as a parallel, like America does. We form our coalitions, we let the United Nations mess around with passing paperwork to deplore this or condemn that or to regret some other damn silly thing…but when it comes down to a matter of force, we know it’s all up to us. For us to step out of something, and say “well we know this guy is right and that guy is wrong, but we’re just going to mind our own business and hope things work out” — that would be tantamount to letting evil carry the day. It would be equivalent to letting bad things happen, through the sin of inaction. We can be guilty of that sin. No other country can. Other countries, like Aquaman, can sit back and say “it’s not our fault, we were hoping Superman/America would handle it.” We don’t have that option. The buck stops with us.

I could go on and on and on. But I think I already have, to the extent anybody in their right mind would want me to. Superman is an American icon…he is America.

But as an afterthought, let me add one other thing.

One endangers one’s own grasp on sanity, if one attempts to argue both sides of the “truth justice all that other stuff” controversy are posed as matters of principle. Bollocks on that. This new Superman movie made a show out of internationalizing the hero who has always been an American icon, for one reason and one reason alone. They did it for the money. Anybody who examines the situation honestly, and thinks on it for so much as a minute or a fraction thereof, knows it to be true. They didn’t want anything to get in the way of those overseas ticket sales.

Cletus, we’re still waiting. Hope you do a better job putting me in my place than this other guy…

As for the check by the Executive on the Judicary; Andrew Jackson is believed to have said “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!”

I can only imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth if Bush said that today.
- Duffy | 07/18/2006 @ 06:19
I came here through the Antiidiotarian Rottweiler, and this has now become my favorite blog. It’s a breath of fresh air and a great relief from my current pursuit of a masters degree. The stuff I have to put up with from fellow students and professors! When these people talk about things closely related to their own expertice they argue constantly. When it comes to politics suddenly they all agree. I find that suspicious.

Lockjaw45
- Lockjaw45 | 07/18/2006 @ 07:23
Lockjaw: That observation is brilliant in its simplicity. That is truly an Arsenio Hall type of “thing that makes you go ‘hmmmm’.” Kudos.
- mkfreeberg | 07/18/2006 @ 07:35
Quite surprisingly, libertarian economist Steve Landsburg argues quite convincingly that the minimum wage is not the big job killer that most other economists believe it to be. Nonetheless, if your objective is to help the working poor, an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) would be much more effective and equitable than raising the minimum wage.
- Internet Esquire | 07/18/2006 @ 15:36
“Gee, real compassionate there KEv.”

your grasp of economics is a tenuous one: employers do not hire simply because they have extra funds floating around. they hire on the basis of need. so, again, your logic is flawed. try again.

KLetus
- KEvronius | 07/18/2006 @ 16:07
“I’m supposed to go “homina homina homina” and backpedal, wishing I had never opined to begin with, for I have no answer to this question.”

wow. you do tend to go into a fit when challenged on your views. not a fan of socratic method, are you? the entrenched mind seldom is….

KEvron
- KEvronius | 07/18/2006 @ 16:11
“On his mistake with the minimum wage, I’m inclined to cut him some slack.”

very gracious of you. but i must point out that the flawed analogy was yours.

KEvron
- KEvronius | 07/18/2006 @ 16:16
KEvron…yoo hoo…

…in spite of all your grandstanding, that fourth guy is still going home. It’s conceptually unavoidable. All the rest of it is spin. You can hit the “Login and Publish” button as many times as you want, it’s not going to change the fact that 4 * 8.5 is more than thirty.

Tell me about some more studies, all you’re doing is proving my point over and over again.
- mkfreeberg | 07/18/2006 @ 19:42
>Internet Esquire said…
>
>Quite surprisingly, libertarian
>economist Steve Landsburg argues
>quite convincingly that the minimum
>wage is not the big job killer that
>most other economists believe it to
>be.

We keep it from being a job killer by spacing out the increases over several years, and making sure it’s hiked no more than 25 to 50 cents at a time. Even so, it still kills jobs. It simply has to. There is no provision to require an employer to hire X many people. All the minimum wage does, is force the employer to wait to hire someone, until his business is solvent enough to meet the requirement. It’s a prohibition against hiring people until the funds are available, and when they’re available, it’s effectively a quota against hiring more than a certain number of people.
- mkfreeberg | 07/18/2006 @ 19:51
“…in spite of all your grandstanding, that fourth guy is still going home.”

of course, i was being generous when i said your grasp “tenuous”.

let me explain it to you again: an employer hires based on his need. his pricing is based on materials, overhead, labor and profit margins (which are limited by demand and competition).

but i can’t overemphasize the point about hiring based on need. let me put it into terms you can better understand:

if an employer requires x employees in order to provide/manufacture his sevices/products, then he must hire x employees. > x will not suffice, and
- KEvronius | 07/18/2006 @ 22:43
No, it’s crystal clear.

We can both agree your theory doesn’t apply to something where customers have to wait in line while a finite number of people attend to their needs. Waiters, for example. But waiters are sometimes exempt…there are grocery store cashiers. Lots of service sector jobs where the number of people hired (or working a shift) is limited, first and foremost, by budgets. LOTS of jobs. Mostly in retail.

According to you, those jobs don’t exist, or else the people who have those jobs, don’t deserve to have them, I guess.

Like I said, your theory is crystal clear. The problem is how it fits in to reality. Your law makes it more expensive to hire people, that’s what it’s supposed to do, and here you are arguing that it won’t do that. Please continue.
- mkfreeberg | 07/19/2006 @ 05:53
“We can both agree your theory doesn’t apply to something where customers have to wait in line while a finite number of people attend to their needs”

i’m disappointed. sure, you’re a prick, but i thought you were a fairly intelligent prick. not the case.

“lines”, eh? how many times have i waited for a table and said to myself “it’s the lack of help! it’s just gotta be!”

“lines” indicate demand….

KEvron
- KEvronius | 07/19/2006 @ 15:52
“lines”, eh? how many times have i waited for a table and said to myself “it’s the lack of help! it’s just gotta be!”

So to sift your lucid message out of the (deliberately) confusing muck of name-calling, let’s recap.

You have never waited in line for anything, and you’re suggesting nobody else waits in line for anything either. Or if they do, nobody ever says to themselves “jeez, they gotta hire more or do whatever they gotta do, I shouldn’t be sitting here this long.”

You’ve never experienced the frustration of standing right in front of some clerk who can’t get off the phone, because there’s nobody else to answer the phone. You’ve never had that happen, and you are saying nobody else has had that happen either.

And I am, or anybody else who deigns to suggest such a thing ever happens is, an unintelligent prick.

Does that sum up your position?

If so, when did they start allowing Internet access in the padded cell?
- mkfreeberg | 07/19/2006 @ 16:05
i’m sorry, but your anecdotal evidence (centered primarily around lines, and the infernal minimum wage that causes them)would get you laughed out of ec 101.

and you’re starting to bore me.

KEvron
- KEvronius | 07/20/2006 @ 00:45
If, by asserting that transactions start to dwindle when prices are raised, I get myself laughed out of an economics class, this is a comment on the class, not on me. Such an assertion is practically the definition of economic theory.

As for boring, don’t go there. That’s the third post in a row you’ve made in which you seek to simply make fun of things, and actually come out and say nothing. My original point, my very first one, had not so much to do with effects of the minimum wage, it had to do with liberals outsourcing their thinking to studies. Since then, all you’ve been doing is proving my point over and over and over again. If you could demonstrate logically how it is we could raise the minimum wage without impacting employment, by now, you would have done it (as I have done in the opposite direction through both theory and anecdote). It’s clear sarcasm is the only tool you have available. Why? Because you outsourced your thinking to a study. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

As a post script, throughout the dialog I have found it amusing, and worthy of some comment, that the minimum wage is being defended as a harmless policy — with lots of snark, sarcasm, and other half-assed arguing tools used only by those who have no other tool at their disposal — by some guy who flies the American flag upside-down at his blog. Does that, in itself, say something about the minimum wage?

The few who might have bothered to read this far into the thread, are welcome to form their own opinions. I’ve formed mine.
- mkfreeberg | 07/20/2006 @ 07:37
“If, by asserting that transactions start to dwindle when prices are raised, I get myself laughed out of an economics class”

straw man arguments. boring.

let’s review: you began with widgets priced at x and y. then you went on to the blight of long lines, ostensibly created by shopkeepers’ fudiciary woes. now you’re telling me your argument was of inflation. i think you may be having a problem with intellectual honesty.

“It’s clear sarcasm is the only tool you have available. Why? Because you outsourced your thinking to a study.”

despite the fact that i have not cited a single study? if your point “had to do with liberals outsourcing their thinking to studies”, and i have yet to cite a single the study, then how do you resolve “all you’ve been doing is proving my point over and over and over again?”

and my latin’s a little rusty; does qed mean “how’s THAT for a false dichotomy”?

“Does that, in itself, say something about the minimum wage?”

i’m sure that in your entrenched mind, it does, indeed, mean that. elsewhere, however, it’s meant as a distress signal.

“I’ve formed mine.”

as have i: yer boring.

KEvron
- KEvronius | 07/20/2006 @ 10:21
A zillion posts in a row where you snark away, and essentially say nothing.

And you say I’m boring.

QED:

Originally Latin meaning “quod erat demonstrandum” or “which was to be shown or proven”, now used mainly by physics students to insult someone when something is proven wrong or false, typically with the words Mother Fucker added for effect.

You assume QED is somehow being used wrongly, without bothering to look it up?

Talk about entrenched thinking.
- mkfreeberg | 07/20/2006 @ 19:59

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