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Thursday, February 23, 2023

Links - 23rd February 2023 (2 - Left Wing Economics)

Sunwing passengers furious after pilot simply doesn't show up for Toronto flight - "Sunwing Airlines, a low-cost carrier known for taking Canadians to sunny destinations down south, announced plans to hire 65 pilots from other countries through Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program in an effort to stabilize staffing.  Those plans were cancelled after concerns were raised by the union that represents some 450 Canadian pilots already employed by Sunwing.  One recent Sunwing passenger says that his flight from Panama to Toronto was delayed by hours because "the pilot didn't show," adding an extra four hours of travel time onto an already-stressful and arduous process. People flying with WestJet and Air Canada have reported the same issue in recent weeks, one tweeting on Monday that they'd been "delayed more than 3 hours" because "this flight has no pilot." Others have recently reported plane delays due to cabin crew and pilots being late, double-booked ground crews, and pilots being forced to cancel on jobs because they've already worked too many hours dealing with previous delays."
Of course, the union is not going to do anything to the pilot who didn't show up or the other staff who screwed up

Meme - "WHAT'S THE NAME OF THE ORGANISM THAT LIVES AT THE EXPENSE OF ANOTHER ORGANISM, THE HOST?"
"A PARASITE"
"MAY I KNOW WHY DID YOU WRITE 'SOCIALIST' IN THE TEST?"

Meme - "I CREATED THIS BUSINESS WITH A VISION. I WANT EVERY HOUSEHOLD TO HAVE A SET OF MY BELOVED TEA CUP DESIGNS. SO I ANALYZED THE MARKET TO UNDERSTAND ITS NEEDS. TOOK THE RISK OF INVESTING MY MONEY TO BUY THIS TEA CUP MAKING MACHINE. AND YOU'LL BE SENT TO TRAINING AT MY EXPENSE AND BE PAID A SALARY FOR WORKING FOR ME."
"SO IF I'LL BE DOING ALL OF THE LABOR HOW COME YOU'RE ENTITLED TO SOME OF THE MONEY?"

War on Poverty at 50 -- Despite Trillions Spent, Poverty Won - "If we are losing the War on Poverty, it certainly isn’t for lack of effort.  In 2012, the federal government spent $668 billion to fund 126 separate anti‐poverty programs. State and local governments kicked in another $284 billion, bringing total anti‐poverty spending to nearly $1 trillion. That amounts to $20,610 for every poor person in America, or $61,830 per poor family of three. Spending on the major anti‐poverty programs increased in 2013, pushing the total even higher.  Over, the last 50 years, the government spent more than $16 trillion to fight poverty.  Yet today, 15 percent of Americans still live in poverty. That’s scarcely better than the 19 percent living in poverty at the time of Johnson’s speech. Nearly 22 percent of children live in poverty today. In 1964, it was 23 percent...   The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable — giving poor people more food, better shelter, health care, etc. — rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty. As a result, we have been successful in reducing the worst privations of poverty. Few Americans live with out the basic necessities of life, yet neither do they rise out of poverty. Moreover, their children are also likely to be poor...   It would make sense therefore to shift our anti‐poverty efforts from government programs that simply provide money or goods and services to those who are living in poverty, to efforts to create the conditions and incentives that will make it easier for people to escape poverty.  And what would such a policy look like? We actually have a pretty solid idea of the keys to getting out of and/or staying out of poverty: (1) finish school; (2) do not get pregnant outside marriage; and (3) get a job, any job, and stick with it. An effective War on Poverty, therefore, would reform our failed government school system to encourage competition and choice...   This doesn’t mean throwing more money at failing schools—we know that there is no correlation between education spending and achievement. Rather it means putting the interests of children before those of the teachers unions, and giving parents more control over where and how their education dollars are spent.   We should also recognize that too many of our current welfare programs actually subsidize out‐of‐wedlock birth. In 1964, just 6.4 percent of children were born out‐of‐wedlock. Today, nearly 41 percent are. Among African‐Americans, more than 70 percent of children are born to single mothers.  Children growing up in a single parent family are almost five times more likely to be poor than children growing up in married‐couple families. Roughly 63 percent of all poor children reside in single‐parent families. Yet, as Charles Murray demonstrated years ago, the overwhelming body of research shows that the increased availability of welfare benefits is directly correlated with an increase in out‐of‐wedlock births. A successful War on Poverty would change these incentives... Fewer than three percent of full‐time workers are poor, compared to nearly 25 percent for those without a job. Even an entry level, minimum‐wage job can be the first step on the road out of poverty."
Clearly we need to spend even more

Meme - Boatyboatwright: "A little Q&A for everyone siding with landlords rn...
HI! I own a house but my tenants can't afford the rent because of the crisis! What should I do?
Congratulations! You own what is called an Investment property. We’re very sorry to hear your tenants are in trouble. Have you considered lowering or even eliminating rent for your tenants during this time?
But that means I will lose money! That doesn't seem fair to me.
On the contrary! Returns on investment (net profit/investment cost) can be positive or negative. This is called risk and it is a fundamental part of being an Investor. You are not guaranteed to make money on investments, even housing.
I still don't think that's fair. Didn't my tenants agree to risk when they signed on to lease my house?
That's not quite right! Unless your tenants have a financial stake/control of the asset, they are not investors and don‚t share your risk. They are people who deserve a place to live.
Well then if I'm an investor then I'm entitled to do whatever I can to get the most returns on my investment, right?
That depends! Do you think that includes forcing someone onto the street? Housing is not a luxury item; it is a necessity. Are you sure you're allowed to force people into homelessness because your investment carried more risk than you thought?
But I have a mortgage to pay off!
You should join your tenants and call on the government for a rent and mortgage amnesty! Mortgage banks are also investors and are responsible for risk too! Don't punish people who can't afford basic necessities, they are the ones in your community, the banks are not.
I don't have a mortgage but I still rely on income from my rental properties. What about me?
If your income is affected by the crisis then you could try applying for government assistance. Your tenants are probably doing the same thing right now. Try asking them for help."
trewayneduane: "Yes owning income properties is an investment but in terms of what you are providing to a tenant that is more of a service than a investment.  When you agree to a lease you don’t agree to “guarantee someone’s investment” you agree to pay for an exchange of goods/services I.e. a place to live. Which contrary to popular belief, is not a right. And if it WAS a right, that right should and would be guaranteed by the state NOT private property owners.  You not paying rent is violating your side of our contractual agreement of goods and services."
dontdropthesopo: "Agreed. I get large corps that own property suspending payment but not all landlords can do this. My dad owns down rental property (a few small units) and their rent pays off the monthly mortgage (which he has been paying for decades). He isn't evicting anyone right now, but seeing most of Reddit believe rent shouldn't be paid makes me worry for him"
AnnualDegree99: "Most of Reddit isn't a particularly mature demographic, so don't worry too much"

NYC TikTok influencers are struggling to rent in the city - "Influencers, creatives and other gig economy workers are struggling to sign leases in the highly competitive NYC rental market despite the city being a major hub for their lines of work... Without paystubs proving a guaranteed salary backed by a third-party company, they said they’re having to go to exhaustive lengths to keep their Empire State of mind a reality — even, in some cases, with six-figure incomes. Kotzur told The Post she is estimated to earn an astonishing $250,000 this year on top of an “excellent” credit score... she has taken to making the six-hour trip into the city for days at a time to squeeze in as many meetings and opportunities for content creation as she can... About 36%, or 57.3 million, workers in the US are currently participating in the gig economy, with more than 50% likely to participate by 2027, according to a 2022 report from project management software company TeamStage. But the unreliability of their income can be a red flag to landlords... “I literally had to beg my landlord,” Meizz said. “I wrote a cover letter, I gave every single invoice that I made in the last year, I gave them proof of my income and everything and they still said that I didn’t make enough and that I still didn’t have enough proof so they wanted a guarantor.”  Meizz eventually gave in and paid the extra $1,500 to secure a third-party guarantor and signed a lease on her $2,500-a-month Bushwick apartment in November after nearly two months of obsessive hunting."
Clearly we need even more legislation to protect tenants, so landlords will need to take even more steps to protect their investment

Meme - "Extra income won't fix your bad spending habits"
"I don't want to fix my spending habits. I want to afford them"
The leftists were very approving of this. Because you never run out of other people's money

π”π”žπ”€π”«π”’π”±π”° 🧲 on Twitter - "the more it annoys a middle class person, the more i am in favour of a poor person getting something for free."
Money is free. Government spending can be funded by printing money, then it will be greedy companies' fault prices are rising

Meme - No. " 50207. 50216002 >>3502 16633 that I don't want to associate with They ssy they're against fascism then go all in on covid fascism. They say they're against the establishment and then ype up joe biden. They say they're against capitalism but are fine with corporations controlling the media as long as it supports their message. They say they're anti-racist yet view everything through the lens of race. They say they're pro free speech but then cheer when someone has ti ice taken away by a social media megacorporation. They say they support trans people and then treat us like infants who can't handle samebody saying the wrong pronoun. They say they support the working class and then demonize the people who do all the actual important work in this country. They're just all full of shit and have no principals, the only want welfare and for their specific to get special privileges nobody else has Left-wing Anon gives their perspective. - ) - "

Howard Levitt: Workplace blockades are an illegal union tactic that can backfire on members - "striking union members are not permitted to obstruct the entry and exit to employers’ places of business.  In other words, a union may not blockade the employer’s facility. In certain circumstances, unions may delay the entry and exit to a place of business for a few minutes to hand out leaflets and information, but a union can never blockade an employer’s premises and prevent it from doing business. This is well known both in labour law circles and by unions themselves. Some even mention it in their websites in describing picketing to their members.  Yet recently, we have had to obtain injunctions against unions in two separate cases where they blockaded their members’ work premises. In both cases, not only were the blockades found to be illegal by the courts, which issued orders prohibiting the misconduct, but, considering the larger picture, both blockades were directly contrary to the union members’ own interests... While the strike was ultimately settled, the business was on the verge of closing, which would have resulted in no jobs for anyone. It remains to be seen whether the union’s conduct has permanently damaged the company’s future viability. Perhaps more importantly, any goodwill the union had with the company was frittered away. And for nothing. The union ultimately accepted almost what had been initially offered but with weeks of lost wages during the strike, that were not made up by strike pay. The second case is even more interesting, as it was in an industry extremely adversely affected by the pandemic...   In effect, the union wanted guaranteed jobs for their members for life. The union then blockaded the premises to attempt to force the employer to accede to its demands, until we obtained an injunction preventing them from doing so.  Even then, the union ignored the court order — going so far as to publicly insult the judge — until it was faced with the threat of additional legal sanctions, including possible fines or imprisonment...   Many unions regard employers as “the enemy.” To be fair, many companies feel the same way about unions and, given these latest examples, often for good reason. However, it is in the best interest of both labour and management to ensure not only the survival but also the success of the employer.  If the company you are working for closes down, it doesn’t matter how good your collective agreement was — you are still out of work."

Meme - "Jesus advises us to be of "generous spirit"—to show kindness, to assist the widow and the orphan. But he clearly means this to be our responsibility, not the government's."
Since Jesus said to love your neighbour as yourself, that means the government must organise neighbourhood festivals to promote neighbour-neighbour relations

Meme - "Poverty and food shortage in socialist countries *sleeping*
Human rights violations under communist regimes *sleeping*
Some loser became homeless in a capitalist country *wakes up*
cApiTaLisM hAs fAiLed"
Comments: "Poverty, food shortages and human rights violations in America due to government incompetence and malice: I sleep.
Socialist country collapses because the US government installed a weak, unpopular puppet government: SOCIALISM HAS FAILED"
"Didn't know Lenin and Mao were plants dog"

Meme - "Record profits with no increase in worker pay are stolen wages"
"Then reduced profits with steady wages is stolen wages in the benefit of workers?"
"If consumers pay low prices to a company with low profits, that's stolen profit"

Meme - Labor 411: "Imagine being proud of selling yourself short."
"The difference I do this for $23/hr. If you want it done by a union electrician with the same level of experience your going to pay more than double that. I do 1200A 480v panels regularly. I, and my partner saved they're company over $2M over the past 2 years in comparison to what union shops bid this job at."
If a company were boasting about having lower prices than its competitors, the leftists would be bashing the other companies for being "greedy"

sab on Twitter - "@POTUS cancel my student loan debt of $79,000 or i’m moving out of this country to Alaska. I speak for all of us!"

Chani B on Twitter - "Apparently every Progressive can afford a Tesla but can't figure out how to pay back student loans."

Meme - "DON'T SCAB. Join the Union of your Class. The I.W.W.  Whenever you speed up or work long hours on the job, you are scabbing on the unemployed"
Then commies complain when they get laid off that "capitalism has failed"

Meme - I Ain't Did Nothing @2RBoSi: "What is the biggest scam in society that is deemed acceptable?"
Frank Sobotka @cymrurouge: "I mean, it's from age 5 to age circa 65 having to go and spend half your waking day doing shit you don't want to do because otherwise you won't eat isn't it"
To many commies, the world really does owe everyone a living

7 Reasons the IRS Will Audit You - "1. Making math errors
2. Failing to report some income
3. Claiming too many charitable donations
4. Reporting too many losses on a Schedule C
5. Deducting too many business expenses
6. Claiming a home office deduction
7. Using nice, neat, round numbers"
IRS audits the poor at 5 times the rate of everyone else, analysis finds - "low-income households with less than $25,000 in annual earnings.   This group is five times as likely to be audited by the IRS as everyone else... The reason is a rise in what are known as "correspondence audits," a review of a tax return that's typically handled by the IRS via letters and phone calls, as opposed to the typically more complex face-to-face audits. More than half of the correspondence audits initiated by the IRS last year involved low-income people who claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)...   There's an explanation for why returns claiming the EITC are more likely to trigger an audit than other tax returns.  One analysis found that as many as half of returns claiming the tax credit had erroneously claimed too much, or even incorrectly claimed the credit at all... The IRS didn't immediately comment on the TRAC report, but it pointed to a blog post about audit rates. Taxpayers with incomes of more than $10 million had "substantially higher audit rates" than those in every other income category from 2010 to 2015... Whatever your income level, the odds of getting audited has declined"
Is it a war on the poor if the poor make more mistakes in their taxes?

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Morality of Taxation - "‘I don't think that the only aim of any tax system should be just to raise revenue. I think that tax plays a really important role in shaping inequalities, which is also really important. And shaping our behaviors and shaping markets. And so I don't think it's right to split out or have that dichotomy between the instrumental and the moral. I think instead taxes is an important system that codifies reciprocity that-’...
‘The richest 10% of households in Great Britain holds 44% of the wealth and the poorest 50%, by contrast, own just 10%. What's wrong with using the tax system to address the hoarding of wealth at the top and redistributing it more equitably? So it can benefit everyone?’
‘Well, there's nothing wrong with that. And I would, I would agree that the tax system is a fantastic economic lever, in order to get to the outcomes that you want. And it's very interesting, actually, because when you look at HMRC’s own figures, you will see that in the last year, the top 1% of taxpayers, that is the highest earners, the top 1%, of earners, in the UK, now shoulder 30% of all tax collected. So what's really interesting when you want to look at these kind of statistics is that compared to the 1970s, that's doubled. In the 1970s, we had incredibly high rates of income tax. So I think the government's job is to find the optimum rate of tax which maximizes tax take, and can therefore achieve some of the social outcomes that you want.’...
‘Dr. Philip Goff, who's Associate Professor of Philosophy at Durham University and a self described huge fan of taxation, to the extent Dr. Goff that you would quarrel with the notion that what I earn is in any sense, my money.’
‘Yeah, I think it's really hard to get away from the idea that my pre tax income, my gross income is my money, and that when the government taxes, they're taking my money off me. But I think that when we really think carefully through this idea, we see that it's actually just confused, because my pre tax income is just the money distributed to me to buy the market. And I don't think anybody thinks the market distributes to each person exactly what they deserve. For example, I don't think anyone thinks a hedge fund manager deserves many more times than a scientist working on a vaccine for the pandemic. The market is just this amoral mechanism. And so, if my pre tax income is just what this amoral mechanism distributes to me, then I don't think it has any moral significance at all. In fact, I think the state has a duty to disrespect pre tax incomes in order to try and shape a more just than happy society’"
This is a good illustration of leftist mentality. Spiting the rich by making them poorer even if it doesn't make anyone else better off is a good thing
Goff has never met a non-leftist

Has Globalization Failed? - Freakonomics - "DUBNER: One critique I’ve read of your book is by the economist Jason Furman, former head of the C.E.A., the Council of Economic Advisers, in the Obama White House. Here’s a quick quote: “The left-wing narrative,” one of several that you describe, “that trade helps the rich at the expense of the poor was stronger on facts about increasing inequality than it was an analysis linking this in any qualitatively important way to trade.”
ROBERTS: Yeah, look, I think that’s actually accurate about where the left-wing populists are. So I think the left-wing populists are much more concerned about class inequality. And they tended to have a hostility to things like international trade deals, but they themselves didn’t fully explore the link between those. I think what Jason is saying is correct. But I think it’s correct about the left-wing populist narrative, that they sort of make an assumption that this is to do with partly to do with trade, but they don’t really fill that out."
The primary objective of left wing economics is to hate on the rich, after all

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "Branco redraws the classic ‘equity’ cartoon but showing three losers instead of three winners. He’s not the only one who has done this as it’s a fair point that equity measures under the CRT framework involves removing the ’priviledge’. So digging a hole for the person with the best view is an approximation. But these cartoons are missing the big picture — why is there a fence? It’s because the game would not exist without one.  An entrepreneur decided that he could put up a higher quality baseball game that people would pay to see instead of watching sandlot baseball for free. So he creates a baseball field where the lines are straight and the distances are accurately measured. Of course this enterprise requires good sight lines so the entrepreneur builds a stadium so that ask can see the game... Those in the stands still need information about the game so he installs a scoreboard, sells programs, and installs PA system and announcers too man it. A shop will be placed by the entrance with goods featuring the teams name and mascot.  All of this requires people to pull off... It takes a lot of money to field a baseball team so the entrepreneur charges for admission. Without that fence the admission fees could not be collected and the game would not exist.  Equality means that every person who can afford a ticket can then purchase an available one if they wish. If a potential customer can’t afford a ticket then they can watch the game on TV for the price of viewing advertisements.  Equity, in this context, means that anyone can watch the live game without paying. This would cause the game to cease to exist and then no one is watching baseball.  Fences matter and equity does not equal fairness."

Meme - Harrison du Plessis: "Hot take: Scholastic Book Fairs are harmful to children from lower-income families. It's hard to imagine anything worse for a child's interest in reading than seeing your classmates' excitement choosing and buying books, and feeling left out and embarrassed from not having the money to participate - repeated time after time as they grow. It should be free or not at all (and schools shouldn't middleman business between children and private companies)."

Meme - "Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad, lran, Chavez...whenever a leader wins popularity in his own country and frees them from the globalist financial system (run by Americans of no particular ethnicity), the west attacks them as tyrants and fabricates atrocity propaganda to win support for invasion and occupation. The one exception is 1940s Germany, which is exactly as our schoolbooks and mainstream media tell us it is."
When you keep going left...

Meme - *Roadsweeper meme*
"Say thank you to the essential worker! He's a hero for his sacrifice"
"This woman has fallen for the myth of exploited workers as "heroes". This man has no choice but to be sacrificed: he's a victim of capitalism. The state refuses to allocates its resources of food and housing to the people who make the country run, forcing its workers to accept any job for any pay. "Thank you" is an insulting gesture that - does nothing to improve the material conditions of the people whose labor we require."
You can't win

The Death of Capitalism—Schumpeter’s prognosis coming true - "Capitalism is doomed to be replaced by socialism. At least that’s the view of Joseph Schumpeter, the well-known Harvard economist responsible for his popularization of the term “creative destruction”... Somewhat ironically, despite Schumpeter being a staunch defender of capitalism and its long-run benefits, this view put him in agreement with the noted socialist writer, Karl Marx. While Marx believed the end of capitalism would come in the form of a working-class revolt due to capitalism’s failures, Schumpeter instead believed that capitalism’s successes would eventually destroy the system from within—a prediction that in many ways looks to be coming true at a more rapid rate than ever. Schumpeter believed that the enormous productivity of capitalism would easily churn out the goods needed for basic consumption, freeing up labour from the fields and factories to enjoy a leisurely life in the new modern intellectual class of academics, journalists and bureaucrats. This class would be so separated and removed from the actual process of entrepreneurship and production, they would turn against the very philosophical foundations and institutions of the economic system that made their lives possible. Not understanding the roots of their own condition, they spend their daily efforts deliberately working to undermine the systems of private property, private contracting, decentralized decision-making, entrepreneurship and voluntary exchange. They condemn capitalism as a foregone conclusion and view any pro-capitalism position as crazy and anti-social.  To Schumpeter, discussion among the intellectuals would require the condemnation of capitalism as “virtually a requirement of the etiquette of discussion.” This is a prediction many believe has come true on university campuses in Canada and the United States."
Late capitalism is when life is so good, you can tear down the system giving you prosperity. See: climate change and degrowth

Meme - "Normalize doing the bare minimum at work. You signed up to do your job. If you're not getting paid extra to do extra tasks, don't do them. The bare minimum is what you signed up for!!! Don't get taken advantage of. Wake up, work your normal hours, do the job you signed up for, and go home."
This is fine, if you don't mind not getting promotions, bonuses or increments, and being the first to be laid off. But if that happens, the leftists will claim "capitalism has failed"

The Meme Policeman - Posts | Facebook - "According to the BLS, average weekly hours for all private sector employees is 34.7/week. The industry with the highest avg hours is mining & logging with 45.2/week, while leisure & hospitality workers avg 26.5/week. It’s just a fantasy that any significant amount of people need to work 60 hrs in this country... And in case someone objects that maybe lots are working multiple jobs @34hrs/week, just 4.3% of the labor force hold multiple jobs. Which means just 2.6% of those ages 16+ hold multiple jobs... As for supposedly being post-scarcity, that’s nonsense. Powerful computers and robotics makes the economy more productive, but doesn’t remove scarcity"

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "Every time the Republicans cut taxes, the Democrats scream that the rich are getting the bulk of the tax cuts. That’s not wrong but the story is a little more complicated than that.  The US has a steeply progressive federal tax system where the bottom ~47% pay no taxes. You can’t cut taxes lower than zero.  We now have tax revenue numbers from 2018 and the wealthy paid a higher percentage of total income taxes. You’ve heard politicians cry that the wealthy don’t pay their fair share of taxes? In 2018 the top 1% of earners paid 40.1% of total income taxes and the bottom 50% paid only 2.9% of total income taxes.  One more argument you hear from politicians is that these tax cuts are responsible for the huge federal budget deficits. This “huge” tax cut let to an increase in federal income tax revenues of 7.2%. The country is running bigger deficits because the politicians are buying re-elections with huge increases in spending. (Total tax revenues rose 0.4% while total spending rose 3.2%.)"
Meanwhile Democrats got upset over the SALT reforms because while making noises that the rich should pay more taxes, they don't actually like it when they must pay more

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