One day you will be able to purchase a CPAP at WALMART

[BlackSpinner]

Do you have any idea what you are talking about? In the U.S. around 5% of all workers work for minimum wage. Employers voluntarily pay 95% of workers more than minimum wage. Markets make this possible - not government bureaucracies and government-set wages. Government drags down the earnings of all, including the low income. Markets build it up.

And BTW, of the 5% making minimum wage, about half of them live in households where the household income is over $50,000. These are students working in malls and grocery stores and retired ladies working part time in my friend's consignment dress shop in order to make a little extra spending money and get out of the house a few hours per week. They already have a "living income" and are not looking for a "living wage". So don't paint the picture that minimum wage workers are poor people with malnutrition. They are not.

Those workers "count in my world". They "don't count in your world" since you don't have any idea who they are. You only cling to a concept. Touch some real flesh and blood someday. Talk to a teenager in an intercity (like Chicago) with no job skills and no experience who cannot get a chance because of the minimum wage laws.

Ummm yeah lots of documentation on the net on how higher minimum wages benefits everyone. Paying a teen less less doesn't help him, if you really wanted to help him you would pay for schooling or an apprenticeship. They used justify hiring children cheap for mining the same way. Pay is based on work done not what you think they should have because of their age or living circumstances. Oh and I have touched real flesh and blood and no in your world they don't count except as the equivalent of cannon fodder.

[archangle]

We definitely have too much regulation.

What we need is not more regulation, we need better regulation.

For anything you want to do, there are thousands of pages of obscure, poorly worded, inconsistent regulations. The regulations are applied inconsistently. It's very expensive to try to understand, much less comply.

A well meaning businessman can't figure out how to work through the maze of regulations, even when he has something new that's safer and better.

The truly bad people know how to work their way through the maze of regulations and do the evil things they want to. They know how to use the regulations to stifle competition. Worst of all, the regulations often protect them from the consequences of their wrongdoing. "Well, yes, we know that our truck drivers are driving without enough sleep, but we complied with the letter of the law in terms of hours of work and hours of break time. Never mind that they drive a different shift every day and don't know when they'll be able to sleep without being woken up in the middle of their 8 hours of sleep."

As an example, Congress and the idiot news media are screaming because there weren't enough inspections at the plant that blew up in West, Texas. They miss the fact that there were no regulations that addressed the idea of having tons of ammonium nitrate near homes and schools. More inspections would have generated more paperwork. It would have made the plant have more handicapped parking spaces, more signs on the wall telling the workers about workmans comp, telling them that forced labor is a crime, have nutritional labels on the vending machines, eco friendly foaming soap dispensers in the bathrooms, energy conserving light bulbs, etc. Nothing would have been done about the ammonium nitrate because it wasn't against the regulations.

We really need to regulate things much better in this country. The problem is that simply doubling the size of the rule books, the cost, and the amount of time doing paperwork isn't going to improve things, it will make things worse.

[djhall]

I don't think that is practical in a world where anyone can put antifreeze in a bottle and claim it is for use as a cough suppressant.... then when someone dies just shrug their shoulders and say, "well, I guess you should have checked the efficacy as a cough suppressant and the safety of the ingredients yourself." In that world we would spend all our time fact checking.

Which world are you from? All fifty states of the U.S. have "fit for purpose" laws and there are cases in court every day prosecuting violators - both civil and criminal cases. What are you asking for? Another redundant law?

Why make up a silly strawman argument (antifreeze for cough suppressant) and then argue against it? You discredit any further comments you make.

Perhaps I wasn't clear when I opened my comments with, "Even though I lean strongly libertarian..." Although my political views are normally irrelevant, on this particular thread topic my opinions are inevitably influenced by my belief that the government has no legitimate right to attempt to deny competent adults absolute control over our own body (provided we don't initiate force against another) or protect us from the consequences of our own decisions, be they good or bad. Nor should they properly involve themselves in sharing the rewards of good decisions or mitigating the consequences of bad decisions. By doing so I self-identified with a group that includes those who advocate the position that the entire concept of government lacks legitimacy and there should be no government at all.

Consequently, I felt it was appropriate that I clarify my position and make clear that I wasn't advocating the lack of any governmental involvement at all in the manufacture, marketing, advertising, or quality control of medications and medical equipment when I said previously that I do not believe prescriptions should be required for xPAP machines and when I further elaborated in response to a question that I believe that also applies to all prescription medications and equipment (except perhaps that which is somehow extremely dangerous to OTHER people.) Failure to clarify that point could also, "discredit any further comments I make" for many.

[Drowsy Dancer]

Can the CPAPs sold at Walmart have BPA in them?

[ChicagoGranny]

We are ships passing in the dark of night.

Regards, Nate

I agree, but I can't resist this one last shot across the bow. It came to me in an email just now. Sure reminds me of Keynes and someone else.



Keynes was badly wrong.

[NateS]

GOP can’t make up its mind on Keynes
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/politi ... 033141.php

Conservative Republicans Loved Keynes and Expansionary Fiscal Policy
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/10/w ... ublic.html

John Maynard Keynes, the GOP's latest whipping boy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03754.html

Keynesians to the left of me, Keynesians to the right of me
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/ ... of-me?lite

[ChicagoGranny]

"Manage Suscriptions" keeps up with you with no hassle to me.

[LSAT]

My Uncle Frank was a Conservative and voted Republican his entire life.

Uncle Frank died last Wednesday....now he votes Democratic.

[ChicagoGranny]

The British economist John Maynard Keynes condemned laissez-faire economic policy on several occasions.[39] In The End of Laissez-faire (1926), one of the most famous of his critiques, Keynes argues that the doctrines of laissez-faire are dependent to some extent on improper deductive reasoning, and, Keynes says, the question of whether a market solution or state intervention is better must be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Even Keynes rejected Keynesian economics. It's past time that the rest of you Keynesians reject it.

[BlackSpinner]

The British economist John Maynard Keynes condemned laissez-faire economic policy on several occasions.[39] In The End of Laissez-faire (1926), one of the most famous of his critiques, Keynes argues that the doctrines of laissez-faire are dependent to some extent on improper deductive reasoning, and, Keynes says, the question of whether a market solution or state intervention is better must be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Even Keynes rejected Keynesian economics. It's past time that the rest of you Keynesians reject it.

Most old people get religion before they die. This is not a rejection of his theories.

[ChicagoGranny]

Most old people get religion before they die. This is not a rejection of his theories.

You need to learn the concept of "invisible hand". It has nothing to do with religion.

[BlackSpinner]

Most old people get religion before they die. This is not a rejection of his theories.

You need to learn the concept of "invisible hand". It has nothing to do with religion.

And you need to learn the concept of science where one fine tunes ones theories based on new data. All he was admitting was that he hadn't totally done that. Just like Einstein hadn't quite got it right when he died and people kept fine tuning it.

[NateS]

Here's the part you'll like, Granny:

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and in The Wealth of Nations (1776) Adam Smith speaks of an invisible hand, never of the invisible hand. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith uses the concept to sustain a "trickling down" theory, a concept also used in neoclassical development theory: The gluttony of the rich serves to feed the poor.

But…

Some economists question the integrity of how the term "invisible hand" is currently used. Gavin Kennedy, Professor Emeritus at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, argues that its current use in modern economic thinking as a symbol of free market capitalism is not reconcilable with the rather modest and indeterminate manner in which it was employed by Smith.[7] In response to Kennedy, Daniel Klein argues that reconciliation is legitimate. Moreover, even if Smith did not intend the term "invisible hand" to be used in the current manner, its serviceability as such should not be rendered ineffective.[8] In conclusion of their exchange, Kennedy insists that Smith's intentions are of utmost importance to the current debate, which is one of Smith's association with the term "invisible hand". If the term is to be used as a symbol of liberty and economic coordination as it has been in the modern era, Kennedy argues that it should exist as a construct completely separate from Adam Smith since there is little evidence that Smith imputed any significance onto the term, much less the meanings given it at present.[9]

The former Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, D. H. MacGregor, argued that:

The one case in which he referred to the ‘invisible hand’ was that in which private persons preferred the home trade to the foreign trade, and he held that such preference was in the national interest, since it replaced two domestic capitals while the foreign trade replaced only one. The argument of the two capitals was a bad one, since it is the amount of capital that matters, not its subdivision; but the invisible sanction was given to a Protectionist idea, not for defence but for employment. It is not surprising that Smith was often quoted in Parliament in support of Protection. His background, like ours today, was private enterprise; but any dogma of non-intervention by government has to make heavy weather in The Wealth of Nations.[10]

Harvard economist Stephen Marglin argues that while the "invisible hand" is the "most enduring phrase in Smith's entire work", it is "also the most misunderstood."

Economists have taken this passage to be the first step in the cumulative effort of mainstream economics to prove that a competitive economy provides the largest possible economic pie (the so-called first welfare theorem, which demonstrates the Pareto optimality of a competitive regime). But Smith, it is evident from the context, was making a much narrower argument, namely, that the interests of businessmen in the security of their capital would lead them to invest in the domestic economy even at the sacrifice of somewhat higher returns that might be obtainable from foreign investment. . . .

David Ricardo . . . echoed Smith . . . [but] Smith's argument is at best incomplete, for it leaves out the role of foreigners' investment in the domestic economy. It would have to be shown that the gain to the British capital stock from the preference of British investors for Britain is greater than the loss to Britain from the preference of Dutch investors for the Netherlands and French investors for France."[11]

According to Professor Emeritus William Grampp of the University of Chicago,

The invisible hand is not a power that makes the good of one the good of all, and it is not any of a number of other things it is said to be. It is simply the inducement a merchant has to keep his capital at home, thereby increasing the domestic capital stock and enhancing military power, both of which are in the public interest and neither of which he intended. Smith's exposition discloses how his rhetorical sallies could disfigure his economics, confuse his argument for free trade, and make him play fast and loose with facts and the ideas of others. . . . [T]here is little or no support in what Smith wrote that can substantiate the interpretations it has been given, thus offering another example of how the words of a great man can mean different things to his readers and can be made into something that he himself would not recognize.[12]

According to Emma Rothschild, Smith was actually being ironic in his use of the term.[13] Warren Samuels described it as "a means of relating modern high theory to Adam Smith and, as such, an interesting example in the development of language."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand

[ChicagoGranny]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007)

Nearly six years and no verifying citations have appeared.

I hope your knowledge base is not being built upon wikipedia.

[NateS]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007)

Nearly six years and no verifying citations have appeared.

I hope your knowledge base is not being built upon wikipedia.

Why don't you do it? You're the self-proclaimed, self-annointed authority.

Nate