Hillary: 'Don't Let Anybody Tell You' That 'Businesses Create Jobs'

ocean515 · Nov 2, 2014

ashurbanipal said:
If any of that were true, it would be easy for you to show it. You'd be able to answer the questions I posed with reasonable replies I couldn't answer. You'd be able to go back through my posts and show where I made one claim, and then its negation later. Instead, you've stopped engaging, and now you're just slinging ad hominems.

Example: You posted a question that suggests I didn't think people liked to enjoy things before NASCAR. What a load. I have no interest in wasting time with someone so completely full of BS that they would post such a contrived and lame question.

Another example: In the example of automobiles, you completely sidestep the fact they were initially banned from public roads and use in cites for some undefinable standard that people were demanding "unfussy" travel? If that were true, why were they banned from use?

A final example, and then I'm done: You posted "there aren't demands for specific products just as such. There is demand for the product which best fills a need" There is no demand for products, but there is demand for products if they fill a need. Either there is demand, or there isn't. This is especially true is they don't even know they have a need for a product.

Again, I could go on, but you're so wedded to the living wage/increase pay and all will be well meme, that it's rather pointless to continue.

eohrnberger · Nov 2, 2014

ashurbanipal said:
Well, it's logically possible that people could exist and want absolutely nothing. So in that sense, of course, you're correct. However, it seems to be the nature of human beings to want some things. A person whose belly is full of food today will be hungry tomorrow. A person who is healthy today will be ill and require medicine tomorrow. A person who needs no shelter because it's a nice temperate day will one day be in blazing heat, pouring rain, or freezing cold. And so on.

No, there would still be demands. Everyone would just be satisfying their own demand.

And if a person is 100% self-sufficient, he won't want much of anything. If he wants it, he'll provide it for himself. Conversely, if someone provides 100% of the desires of a person, that person wants for nothing and won't represent a demand.

True, they are both theoretical extreme boundary conditions, and not likely to exist in the real world, much less our society as it's currently structured. We agree on that.

ashurbanipal said:
Then ask yourself this: would any business (that actually stays in business for very long) create a job to fill a demand which wasn't there? Would any business (that actually stays in business for very long) create a job to fill a demand for which people couldn't possibly pay enough to create profit? And what happens to businesses that flout those rules?

Other parts of the business would have to end up paying for the parts that aren't providing value proportional to their expense. Kinda how the UAW jobs bank works? Maybe?

ashurbanipal said:
Again, I get that (at least in our economic model) business is what goes about filling the demand. And this isn't all. Businesses are what "spin up" demands (plural) from subsistence level economies to industrial and post-industrial economies such as the one we enjoy.
So long as we have such a thing as private ownership (not something with which I want to do away), we'd be foolish to not allow business to thrive. But in fact, one principle effect of taking my point seriously is that businesses should begin to thrive more, because they'll have more customers with more money to spend.

No argument here. The more customers which are buying represent more demand that business will compete to fulfill. It's the spiral upward that we all want to enjoy and participate in. Further, as demand for employees increases in business, the more each of those jobs will be compensated, especially the highly skilled and educated jobs, but all jobs in general.

ashurbanipal said:
I think at least some of what I've said is in rough agreement with this notion. However, sometimes theory is rather important. Theories that are tolerably accurate can tell us what to do when something goes wrong. And that's the kind of point I'm making. We shouldn't be so confused about what has gone wrong in our economy. We need to take direct steps to help there be more customers with the ability to pay for their demands. Do that, and we'll get back in a virtuous cycle. Do it not, and we'll keep swirling around the rim of another vicious cycle.

We we agree that both demand and jobs are part of both the virtuous cycle and the vicious cycle.

Gee, I'm glad that you came around to my way of thinking on this. :mrgreen:
Naa, just pulling your leg. I think we've both moved towards each other on this. A sign of a successful discussion I'm thinking.

ashurbanipal · Nov 2, 2014

Justabubba said:
no. it is NOT a simple solution. at least not a simple one to achieve

Oh, sure. I was talking about the simplicity of realizing what the solution is, not how difficult it would be to implement. In fact, I don't have any hope that anything like what I would suggest would be implemented in this country for many years, if ever.

Justabubba said:
if this were to be accomplished, share with us how you would then maintain that balance of wealth

I'd start by returning to the tax structure (roughly speaking) present in the early 1960's. Top marginal rates on earned income were around 50%, which I think is correct. I'd also probably introduce pay-gap policies, and also policies limiting work hours.

Justabubba said:
my expectation is that most of those without wealth but who acquired assets by unearned gift would soon lose that newfound currency
without a change in one's underlying behavior, such as absence of motivation, taking actions towards immediate gratification rather than a willingness to await delayed gratification, and a general ignorance of asset management, would return those recipients to the positions they are in today

Greed is a great beast. It can drive an economy, but it must be yoked and carefully observed and controlled. It can never really be tamed. Adam Smith had a great deal to say about this. One thing he said which tends to surprise people who have not read The Wealth of Nations is that prices of products should be subject to supply and demand, but wages should be regulated so as to be as near as possible to what he called the "liberal reward of labor"--which is exactly equivalent to the sum total value of the productivity of an average worker. I think he more or less got it right. Business should be restricted to make a reasonable profit (I think 10% is a good target), and the rest should go into the hands of the workers in accord to the value they produce. Everyone has an incentive to work hard, there's steady economic expansion through business profit, and people are paid fairly. I can't see what's not to like about such a setup.

ashurbanipal · Nov 2, 2014

ocean515 said:
Example: You posted a question that suggests I didn't think people liked to enjoy things before NASCAR. What a load. I have no interest in wasting time with someone so completely full of BS that they would post such a contrived and lame question.

There's nothing contrived or lame about it. My position has been and continues to be that a demand exists before products or services are made, but that the demand is a general one. So, products or services for which there come to be demands are only so because they satisfy the more basic demand. If that's true, then demand is more fundamental than supply, and if we want an economy with a virtuous cycle, we should nurture demand, and the ability of people to pay for products that fill them, first.

ocean515 said:
Another example: In the example of automobiles, you completely sidestep the fact they were initially banned from public roads and use in cites for some undefinable standard that people were demanding "unfussy" travel? If that were true, why were they banned from use?

For a variety of reasons mainly having to do with concerns about how to regulate their use, as I understand it, anyway. I don't know what you're going for here. Again, it looks to me like this supports my view, not yours. Regulations against automobiles prevented them from entering the marketplace. Unless there were a pre-existing demand, there doesn't seem to be any social force available to overturn those regulations.

Conversely, the fact that there are regulations against something in no way signifies a lack of demand for it. I'm sure plenty of people would love to own slaves, for example. There are still enough people who are so racist that they wouldn't have any moral qualms about owning other human beings. So the laws against slavery don't entail there's not an extant demand. By parity of reasoning, then, the fact that there were regulations against automobiles doesn't entail that there wasn't demand for them (be careful reading this part--I'm not saying there was demand for automobiles as such, only that your example doesn't show there wasn't, and the reason it doesn't show that also precludes it showing there was no general demand such as I've been talking about).

Anyway, I didn't sidestep this point. I answered it directly in a previous post.

ocean515 said:
A final example, and then I'm done: You posted "there aren't demands for specific products just as such. There is demand for the product which best fills a need" There is no demand for products, but there is demand for products if they fill a need. Either there is demand, or there isn't. This is especially true is they don't even know they have a need for a product.

Demand exists. Demand is for any product that has some set of properties. Had people made hovercraft before automobiles, or made some other invention altogether with relevantly similar properties, that's what would have taken off. Demand isn't for automobiles, but for any product that has properties sufficiently similar to automobiles. This is why it would be plausible for someone to invent something right now that has all the plusses of an automobile, and slightly fewer minuses, and in an ideal market, automobiles would be replaced. There isn't demand for automobiles per se, but rather, for some product that does what automobiles do.

The same point applies to NASCAR, or any other product.

ashurbanipal · Nov 2, 2014

eohrnberger said:
Other parts of the business would have to end up paying for the parts that aren't providing value proportional to their expense. Kinda how the UAW jobs bank works? Maybe?

I think ultimately such businesses would fail. Smart business owners start companies to fill demands that already exist. Their products and services may go on to create new demands, certainly. But the initial demand must exist first so revenues start accruing shortly after production begins, and those in turn pay for further production.

eohrnberger said:
No argument here. The more customers which are buying represent more demand that business will compete to fulfill. It's the spiral upward that we all want to enjoy and participate in. Further, as demand for employees increases in business, the more each of those jobs will be compensated, especially the highly skilled and educated jobs, but all jobs in general.

Yes, I think that's right.

eohrnberger said:
We we agree that both demand and jobs are part of both the virtuous cycle and the vicious cycle.

Again, correct. The only thing I would add is that demand is more fundamental, and so is more important. But in practical terms, while I think paying attention to the demand side is how to get an economy going, I reiterate that its a big mistake to go full-on socialist and forget about nurturing business. There has to be a balance, and once it's acheived, it has to be zealously guarded. But if it can be acheived, it means peace and prosperity for everyone, or nearly so.

eohrnberger said:
Naa, just pulling your leg. I think we've both moved towards each other on this. A sign of a successful discussion I'm thinking.

A rarity on DP, I'm afraid. I appreciate your reasonable response.

eohrnberger · Nov 2, 2014

ashurbanipal said:
I think ultimately such businesses would fail. Smart business owners start companies to fill demands that already exist. Their products and services may go on to create new demands, certainly. But the initial demand must exist first so revenues start accruing shortly after production begins, and those in turn pay for further production.

Well, granted that most business establish to fill an existing demand, but that's not the only way it's done. There was no demand for a microwave oven, until the engineers built one and said, 'Hey! Does anyone want to buy this?', and they created a demand that did. (Well, OK, maybe they sold the idea to management which then committed to spending on the marketing and product development in the hopes that it would build into a demand).

Everyone was happy with BlackBerries until the touch screen smartphone came out, and the market demand changed, rather dramatically.

Seems that the more disruptive inventions businesses aren't to address an existing demand, but exploit a technical development into a new demand.

ashurbanipal said:
Yes, I think that's right.

Again, correct. The only thing I would add is that demand is more fundamental, and so is more important. But in practical terms, while I think paying attention to the demand side is how to get an economy going, I reiterate that its a big mistake to go full-on socialist and forget about nurturing business. There has to be a balance, and once it's acheived, it has to be zealously guarded. But if it can be acheived, it means peace and prosperity for everyone, or nearly so.

I agree. There's an optimal balance between demand and filling the demand (jobs, business). Only wish more would understand this balance, and also guard against it tilting too far one way or the other.

ashurbanipal said:
A rarity on DP, I'm afraid. I appreciate your reasonable response.

As do I appreciate yours.