wal-mart bullies truck drivers, suppliers, workers and is rated amongst the lowest as far as working conditions overseas. i'm pretty sure you guys need to review wal-mart's record one more time. they're one of the most sued companies in america, destroy small businesses, etc. wow, they're so great! it's really not that impressive it's just taking the easy way out. i'm not surprised will saw something that agreed with his ideology and then said "whelp, that's good enough for me!" but come on, seriously? do you honestly think that being a world beater comes free? or is someone paying for it?

Interesting conversation. I found Joseph Heath's intellectual trajectory interesting, but lost a lot of interest in what he had to say when he said "Marxist haven't had much to say about credit." Okaaaaaay. I guess he hasn't heard of Capital Vol. 3.

Excellent G.E. Moore allusion, Will!

Nice job, Will, getting a philosopher who actually knows something about economics.

On the subject of Wal-Mart, I wonder if anyone else saw this piece by Charles Platt a couple of months back. Platt went "undercover" as a Wal-Mart employee to see what really went on there. His account tends to confirm what Prof. Heath said. The place is really super-efficient and a lot of effort is put into building loyalty and trust between the company and employees, most of whom seem quite happy there.

Joseph's book is available on Amazon's Canada site.

Corporations are like wild animals. They need to be caged.

The professor said that government is large because there is a demand for the services it provides and only government can provide those services. I can accept that there is the demand, but see government as a monopolist in terms of providing those services. Cities could auction off bus routes to private operators. Each leg of the mail delivery system could be performed by contractors. The central post service just collects and distributes the fees. Unemployment insurance sold by the private sector. Where the insurance carrier guarantees the individual a minimum wage job when they are unemployed. and of course, social security could easily be privatized.

This was a fascinating diavlog. While I was a little dubious at the beginning, because "everything you know is wrong!" people tend to be a bit glib and superficial, I found more and more meat to what Joseph was saying the longer I listened. One point that struck me just right was when Joseph put some perspective on the US's global military role by saying (paraphrasing) "imagine if the US provided health care for the whole world, for free." I could hear conservative heads exploding. Another interesting concept from Joseph was the claim that if the US government got appreciably bigger, it would have no choice but to become better (more efficient), especially in light of Mickey Kaus's pretty good line the other day about "if we're going to grow the government to the same size as it is in Sweden, then I want Sweden!" (Meaning a full health care plan, etc.) A third interesting notion from Joseph: that money gums up the works of capitalism. It is dogma taught well before Econ 101 that money is great, because it makes transactions more efficient, but I could sort of see what he was saying. Good interview, Will. Thanks for a good hour.

Quoting Blackadder: On the subject of Wal-Mart, I wonder if anyone else saw this piece by Charles Platt a couple of months back. Platt went "undercover" as a Wal-Mart employee to see what really went on there. His account tends to confirm what Prof. Heath said. The place is really super-efficient and a lot of effort is put into building loyalty and trust between the company and employees, most of whom seem quite happy there.

Walmart is my favorite store. It is very unfair that democrats limit their size and number.

Quoting DenvilleSteve: Walmart is my favorite store. It is very unfair that democrats limit their size and number.

Don't worry Steve. When Texas secedes it will build one continuous Walmart store on top of the existing "NAFTA Highway." Spanning from the Mexican border on up to Oklahoma. You ought to be able to meet all your needs in a one stop shopping paradise (make sure to wear comfy shoes for the trek).

Quoting Blackadder: On the subject of Wal-Mart, I wonder if anyone else saw this piece by Charles Platt a couple of months back. Platt went "undercover" as a Wal-Mart employee to see what really went on there. His account tends to confirm what Prof. Heath said. The place is really super-efficient and a lot of effort is put into building loyalty and trust between the company and employees, most of whom seem quite happy there.

An mildly interesting read, and there are some plausible points, but I do have to say, it's awfully easy to look on the bright side of a situation you know you're going through it only as an exercise. And if one person's anecdote is that persuasive to you, then I can tell you a few from people I know who work(ed) at Wal-Mart that are fairly horrific. It can be a soul-sucking place to work, especially when you don't have the luxury of knowing, "I'll be out of here in a couple more days and back to my nice writer job and the rest of my comfortable life." It's kind of like people from the 'burbs who go to

Wow, very interesting to learn of the existence of Say's Law. My thinking on how to have a healthy economy focuses on productivity. Everything that is produced will be consumed. Consumption is equivalent to the standard of living. When production is high, consumption and the standard of living will be resultingly high. If auto workers worked for a market rate of pay and worked a lot of productive hours, there would be more and cheaper cars for everyone. As it is now, I will never buy a car from a company owned by the democrat party. Government, if it insists on being involved, should focus on facilitating the communication and transactions between producers and consumers. Obama, being the typical blinders wearing democrat, will never allow himself to consider such ideas.

Quoting bjkeefe: It's kind of like people from the 'burbs who go to the inner city for one day to help with a big community clean-up

Why would there be a need for people outside the community to do that? There obviously are enough workers in the inner city to do the job.

Quoting DenvilleSteve: Why would there be a need for people outside the community to do that? There obviously are enough workers in the inner city to do the job.

There may be enough warm bodies, but there could be a lot of other pieces missing; e.g., the impetus to put together a cohesive effort, perhaps the skills to organize it, very likely the price of the materials, tools, and clean-up. And the people coming in from the outside are working as volunteers, so that's another factor -- no one who's benefiting from the labor has to pay for it.

Quoting bjkeefe: An mildly interesting read, and there are some plausible points, but I do have to say, it's awfully easy to look on the bright side of a situation you know you're going through it only as an exercise.

Well I was actually referring to the assessments of the Wal-Mart employees Platt talked to of their own situation, rather than his assessment of his situation (the people he talked to weren't going through the experience only as an exercise). Of course it's possible the folks Platt worked with weren't a representative sample of Wal-Mart employees generally. The fact that Wal-Mart has been ranked among the best employers to work for, along with the larger number of applications for positions relative to available slots both suggest that isn't the case.

Quoting DenvilleSteve: Unemployment insurance [could be] sold by the private sector. Where the insurance carrier guarantees the individual a minimum wage job when they are unemployed.

Possibly. My guess, though, is that a private market for unemployment insurance would be subject to the adverse selection problem by Prof. Heath mentioned (if a company tried to provide such insurance, the people who bought it would be the ones most likely to be fired, which would end up driving the company out of business). There's also the risk in a private market that companies will be overwhelmed if there is a severe downturn, at which point everyone is screwed. I believe that in Singapore the government doesn't provide unemployment insurance, and I'm not aware of any private market for UI having developed as an alternative. So I'm inclined to think that UI is one of those things where if you want it, the government has to provide it. I agree with you about mail and public transit, though.

Too bad they didn't attack that old chestnut. I'm tired of free trade fanatics declaring that the Smoot-Hawley tariff "caused the Great Depression" or was even a major contributory factor.

Quoting rcocean: Too bad they didn't attack that old chestnut. I'm tired of free trade fanatics declaring that the Smoot-Hawley tariff "caused the Great Depression" or was even a major contributory factor.

The disasterousness of Smoot-Hawley is actually one of the few things there's cross-ideological consensus on in economics.

It is a little disingenuous, I think, for Joe to present differences in theoretical judgments, which are grounded in disputes about 'auxiliary' or 'collateral commitments' (such as different assumptions about how competitive markets actually are, or how much information is available to whom, and so on), as though these differences were a function of 'fallacies' embraced by many of the worlds most sophisticated economists. For example, Joe H. suggests that 'underconsumptionist' (or overproductionist, which means the same thing) economists, like Michal Kalecki, Alvin Hansen, Josef Steindl, and Paul Sweezy, were all guilty of a "fallacious" misunderstanding of markets because they claim that modern capitalism tends toward "secular stagnation" due to overproduction. But think about that claim. All those writers taught economics at Harvard or Oxford, and they are some of the most famous and influential economists of the 20th century. It is conceivable, in principle, that they might be guilty of some rudimentary theoretical gaffe, based on some failure of "economic literacy." But how plausible is that? If you read the work of these economists you find that, on the contrary, they are extremely sophisticated in their grasp of 'economic literacy.' However, they have a non-classical picture of how capitalism, especially 'mature' capitalism (w/ large multinational corporations involved in

Wal-Mart is not the devil incarnate, and there are pricing benefits for poor people, BUT wages are low and benefits are minimal. For communities interested in a living wage, green businesses and fair trade practices (on the foreign imports), Wal-Mart is a disaster. They provide jobs, but the jobs generally suck. We have a strong anti-Wal-Mart movement going in my area. In my view, the best way to go is for local governments to negotiate hard deals with Wal-Mart. When people organize, local govs. can act as surrogate union for the workers.

The big issue is health care, joseph heath mentions that this is the reason why in canada walmart is not perceived the same way. Walmart is subsidized by tax payers because they pay so little that many of their employees are still using the safety-net even though they are employed. this is acting like a tax on americans that goes directly into the pockets of the walton family.

Quoting popcorn_karate: The big issue is health care, joseph heath mentions that this is the reason why in canada walmart is not perceived the same way.

Walmart is subsidized by tax payers because they pay so little that many of their employees are still using the safety-net even though they are employed.

this is acting like a tax on americans that goes directly into the pockets of the walton family.

The idea here seems to be that if the government weren't providing health insurance or other safety net type programs to Wal-Mart employees, the company would have to. This is a faulty assumption. If the government were to stop providing social services to Wal-Mart employees, this wouldn't force Wal-Mart to raise wages or provide more compensation. It would just mean that most of the employees who now receive these social services would have to go without. I mean, if you're right, then people in Canada ought to be more mad at Wal-Mart, not less. After all, the social safety net is greater there than it is here. Whereas here only some Wal-Mart employees get government funded health care, in Canada

Quoting Wonderment: Wal-Mart is a disaster. They provide jobs, but the jobs generally suck.

And yet, when Wal-Mart opens a new store, you often have people lining up to apply for positions. Why would they do that if the jobs suck so much? If your answer is that the alternatives for the people applying are even worse, then you are probably right. But if that's the case, then it's hard to see why keeping Wal-Mart out of a community is something to brag about. Not only do you deny people the chance to buy goods at a lower cost, but you also deny workers a chance to get a job that sucks less than their current gig. That's lose-lose as far as I can see.

Quoting Wonderment: Wal-Mart is not the devil incarnate, and there are pricing benefits for poor people, BUT wages are low and benefits are minimal.

http://walmartfacts.com/reports/2006...atesWages.html "...The average hourly, full-time wage for Associates in our U.S. stores is $10.76. ..." "... In fact, earlier this year, 813,759 Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club hourly Associates in the United States were awarded more than $529.8 million in bonuses. ..." ( that averages at $650 per worker. ) "...Every Associate who works in the continental United States can become eligible for individual health coverage that costs as little as $5 per month in some areas and no more than $8 per month nationwide. ..."

Quoting Wonderment: We have a strong anti-Wal-Mart movement going in my area. In my view, the best way to go is for local governments to negotiate hard deals with Wal-Mart. When people organize, local govs. can act as surrogate union for the workers.

Democrats have such disregard for the rights of the minority. They are even denied decent stores to shop in.

Those of you romanticising wal-mart are delusional. All they're doing is using insanely poor people to make cheap bullshit for other poor people. It's what every big box store does. There's nothing there to be proud of.

Quoting DenvilleSteve: "...The average hourly, full-time wage for Associates in our U.S. stores is $10.76. ..."

"... In fact, earlier this year, 813,759 Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club hourly Associates in the United States were awarded more than $529.8 million in bonuses. ..."

( that averages at $650 per worker. )

"...Every Associate who works in the continental United States can become eligible for individual health coverage that costs as little as $5 per month in some areas and no more than $8 per month nationwide. ..."

Are you agreeing or disagreeing with him? As a newly hired part-time worker at Walgreen's I made more than that. Walmart is usually in lower cost-of-living areas, but still as an average over a full-time work force that is a pretty low wage.

Quoting Blackadder: I mean, if you're right, then people in Canada ought to be more mad at Wal-Mart, not less. After all, the social safety net is greater there than it is here. Whereas here only some Wal-Mart employees get government funded health care, in Canada all of them do. If that represents a tax subsidy to Wal-Mart, then the subsidy is a lot higher in Canada than in the States.

yes, in canada everybody gets tax payer provided insurance. so no comapany provides it. everyone pays and its fair. here, some companies are responsible and provide pay and benefits that are enough to live on. others are "free riders" and pay little, but have all the taxpayers in the u.s. subsidize that free rider business model.

And yet, when Wal-Mart opens a new store, you often have people lining up to apply for positions. Why would they do that if the jobs suck so much?

Yes, because no job is worse.

But if that's the case, then it's hard to see why keeping Wal-Mart out of a community is something to brag about.

I'm not bragging about keeping WM out. I'm suggesting that communities should cut better deals with them. Thus, the analogy to unions.

That's lose-lose as far as I can see.

On the contrary, it's win-win. My city has something Wal-Mart wants. They came to us. We didn't go to them. There are lots of creative ways they can improve the offer. It is good, however, that some communities have said No to them. That gives us more credibility. We're not bluffing. If they don't improve the offer, we could walk away from the deal.

"...Every Associate who works in the continental United States can become eligible for individual health coverage that costs as little as $5 per month in some areas and no more than $8 per month nationwide. ..."

What does "can become" mean?

Quoting pampl: The disasterousness of Smoot-Hawley is actually one of the few things there's cross-ideological consensus on in economics.

My point was regarding the fallacy of asserting that Smoot Hawley caused or was a major significant cause of the Great Depression in the USA. Your point - which didn't address mine is - is that S-H was "disasterous." So we're talking about 2 different things, or maybe not. since I have no idea what "disasterousness" means. Smoot-Hawley may have been a small negative, but its impact on the Unemployment in the USA was insignificant.

Quoting rcocean: My point was regarding the fallacy of asserting that Smoot Hawley caused or was a major significant cause of the Great Depression in the USA. Your point - which didn't address mine is - is that S-H was "disasterous." So we're talking about 2 different things, or maybe not. since I have no idea what "disasterousness" means.

Smoot-Hawley may have been a small negative, but its impact on the Unemployment in the USA was insignificant.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/disastrousness The point is that no one with a clue calls "the Economic Fallacy of Smoot-Hawley" an "old chestnut"

Wow, Pampi what a persuasive argument . Do you write bumper stickers for a living?

Quoting bjkeefe: One point that struck me just right was when Joseph put some perspective on the US's global military role by saying (paraphrasing) "imagine if the US provided health care for the whole world, for free." I could hear conservative heads exploding.

Well one could make an argument that the US is indeed already providing health care for the whole world: not just through various fights such AIDS in Africa etc, but also simply because it's basically the only place with enough free enterprise in the health sector to create research and development of new cures and new drugs.

WalMart was the unsung hero of the Katrina disaster, I might have already linked to this (if so my apologies): http://www.semp.us/publications/biot...php?BiotID=569

I did not buy Heath's argument that government is more efficient because wherever you look you see big government. Unless of course you define as 'efficient' everything that simply 'exists'. To see the problem with that kind of reasoning, go back a few hundred years and look around: you'd see slavery all around you. Would you then conclude that slavery is more efficient? Ok, sure, coercing people might very well be the most expedient way to go about things, but what do you accomplish by affirming such a tautology?

Quoting Unit: I did not buy Heath's argument that government is more efficient because wherever you look you see big government. Unless of course you define as 'efficient' everything that simply 'exists'. To see the problem with that kind of reasoning, go back a few hundred years and look around: you'd see slavery all around you. Would you then conclude that slavery is more efficient? Ok, sure, coercing people might very well be the most expedient way to go about things, but what do you accomplish by affirming such a tautology?

This is exactly why it's so important to define "efficient." Like a lot of things, if you define it narrowly enough to be useful it might stop making sense. Back when I took econ in every model consumer preferences were given. However, recently I was rewatching Arrested Development, and when GOB's fireball trick fails he always says, "But where did the lighter fluid come from?" and it occurred to me, "But where did the preferences come from?" Turns out there's a literature on that. It's called "endogenous preferences". One model I came across had people with initial preferences for private versus public goods. If the public goods weren't happening, they

Quoting Unit: Well one could make an argument that the US is indeed already providing health care for the whole world: not just through various fights such AIDS in Africa etc, but also simply because it's basically the only place with enough free enterprise in the health sector to create research and development of new cures and new drugs.

I remember when Giuliani made a similar point about being lucky to get cancer in America. Turns out his treatment was developed by Danish researchers.

Quoting Thanks, dad!: Those of you romanticising wal-mart are delusional. All they're doing is using insanely poor people to make cheap bullshit for other poor people. It's what every big box store does. There's nothing there to be proud of.

there are two sides to the standard of living calculation. How much you earn and how much you spend. The standard of living of WalMart shoppers is raised because they can purchase more of what they need with the money they have. My only problem with WalMart is so much of what they sell is imported from China.

Quoting Unit: WalMart was the unsung hero of the Katrina disaster, I might have already linked to this (if so my apologies):

http://www.semp.us/publications/biot...php?BiotID=569

"Hero" I'll go along with, although I think it cheapens the term somewhat. I'd say "good corporate citizen" for what they did after Katrina. But "unsing?" Please. Their PR machine did not fail to let everyone know what they did. Not that there's anything particularly heinous about that, but let's be honest.

Quoting Unit: Well one could make an argument that the US is indeed already providing health care for the whole world: not just through various fights such AIDS in Africa etc, but also simply because it's basically the only place with enough free enterprise in the health sector to create research and development of new cures and new drugs.

I won't deny that the US does something, certainly. But let's not get carried away; the US could be doing a helluva lot more. The US per capita foreign aid contribution is pales in comparison to most industrialized nations, for one thing. For a second, some of this giving is as much driven by companies looking to burnish their images or to gain footholds in new markets or both. (Not that this is completely wrong, just sayin'.) And for a third, to give a little context, I have seen studies that say that world hunger could be eliminated for $30 billion per year (e.g.). This amount represents about one-twentieth of US annual military spending.

Quoting claymisher: I remember when Giuliani made a similar point about being lucky to get cancer in America. Turns out his treatment was developed by Danish researchers.

Ah! Denmark again! Just trying to save my argument at all costs: maybe Danish researchers are helped by the fact that Americans will pay full price for their discoveries, while I read somewhere that the US sold pharmaceuticals to France at a discount because France wants to subsidize them to its citizens. This could just be a bunch of hear-say....

Quoting bjkeefe: I won't deny that the US does something, certainly. But let's not get carried away; the US could be doing a helluva lot more. The US per capita foreign aid contribution is pales in comparison to most industrialized nations, for one thing. For a second, some of this giving is as much driven by companies looking to burnish their images or to gain footholds in new markets or both. (Not that this is completely wrong, just sayin'.) And for a third, to give a little context, I have seen studies that say that world hunger could be eliminated for $30 billion per year (e.g.). This amount represents about one-twentieth of US annual military spending.

It's debatable whether foreign aid is working or not: there are so many unintended consequences to it and unaccountability that it's just very hard to determine if it does net good or net bad (think of enriching tyrants, creating dependence on the aid, crowding out local entrepreneurs, etc....) Your second point doesn't bother me in the least, in fact, some argue that foreign companies in Africa are much less discriminating than local companies because they don't understand the local customs, so for instance they'd hire

Quoting claymisher: This is exactly why it's so important to define "efficient." Like a lot of things, if you define it narrowly enough to be useful it might stop making sense.

Back when I took econ in every model consumer preferences were given. However, recently I was rewatching Arrested Development, and when GOB's fireball trick fails he always says, "But where did the lighter fluid come from?" and it occurred to me, "But where did the preferences come from?" Turns out there's a literature on that. It's called "endogenous preferences". One model I came across had people with initial preferences for private versus public goods. If the public goods weren't happening, they (rationally) shifted their preferences to private goods, further impoverishing the public sector, etc, ... feedback loop. Further, your preferences might be formed by your interactions with other people, and other people's preferences. If you stop taking preferences as a given it makes a whole lot of standard models go wobbly.

I'm only about halfway through this one but it seems like they're taking an unquestioning view of mainstream economics. I've got about dozen complaints and quibbles so far already.

I guess preferences can be measured as "willingness to pay", so they

Quoting Unit: It's debatable whether foreign aid is working or not: there are so many unintended consequences to it and unaccountability that it's just very hard to determine if it does net good or net bad (think of enriching tyrants, creating dependence on the aid, crowding out local entrepreneurs, etc....)

Your second point doesn't bother me in the least, in fact, some argue that foreign companies in Africa are much less discriminating than local companies because they don't understand the local customs, so for instance they'd hire women or ethnic minorities without a problem.

For the last point, again I don't really believe it inasmuch that hunger can really only be defeated in a sustainable way if these poor countries start to grow like say China or South Korea....

There is merit to your first and third points. I just wanted to point out that when you said "one could make an argument that the US is indeed already providing health care for the whole world," there are some limits to this argument. As to the second, as I said in my last, American companies looking to promote themselves and build new markets is not something I look at as all bad.

wow, life must be pretty straight forward for you, huh? complaining about imports from china while wanting cheap goods makes no sense...unless you'd rather they import from even poorer countries like vietnam or bangladesh. how do you think they're doing this? magic? and if you're genuinely concerned about the standard of living of the poor then you should love imports! without us buying crap from asia, those slaves would hardly have any money at all!
i could give you the obvious complaint list from wikipedia or one of the many docs on wal-mart but instead i'll link to this:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/09...king-cond.html
that is how we get some of our goods that are "helping" so much.
here is how they operate: shop around for towns that are the most desperate for jobs who'll give them such a huge tax cut the town is practically paying them to operate there (corporate welfare); give as few workers healthcare and limit the hours of full-time employees because they're afraid of paying overtime; strongly discourage and intimidate union supporters; tell suppliers that they won't sell their product unless they give them a deal

Overproduction does not matter? Assuming the price of inputs required to make some good are not affected by how much supply their is for some good. How can overproduction not matter? I would think eventually the price of the good will fall below the price of the inputs. Wouldn't that make the business that makes said good lose money? Isn't this exactly why we subsidize farmers not to cut how much food they produce?

I think we needed a fuller and better explanation of the implications of Say's Law at the beginning. I've been hearing a lot about this "law" recently, and I don't really understand it. The idea seems to be that production in the aggregate will necessarily create demand for something, something equal in value to the value of the aggregate production. So the question arises, does it matter what is produced, or not? The law seems to imply that it is a matter of indifference what is produced, since demand will always be equal to supply. But this can't be right. If goods are produced which no one wants, that seems to present a problem. The fact that someone might buy the unwanted goods at a very low price seems of little consolation. And in some cases, one might have to pay people to get rid of worthless goods. So is it the case that limitations are placed upon what can be [rationally] produced in order for the "law" to hold, or not? Generally speaking, the tendency to overcapacity and overproduction in modern capitalism seems extremely obvious. Automobiles and real estate are two obvious examples of

People who talk about capitalist overproduction are usually critics of advertising or people who believe in Marx's prophesy about the end of capitalism. Neither of those make a lot of sense. Heath would have been better off without invoking Say's Law, which isn't really a law. The funny thing is that economies with innovation absolutely rely on overproduction, in the sense that new kinds of goods are made before the producer knows if anyone will want to buy them, and the bad goods often go straight into the landfill, the bad new restaurants close quickly, etc. That's how nature and evolution works: lots of experiments, mostly failures, and a few major successes. How many acorns turn into oaks? One in a thousand? Just for fun, Marx on credit:

... credit accelerates the violent outbreaks of this contradiction, crises, and with these the elements of dissolution of the old mode of production ... The credit system has a dual character immanent in it: on the one hand it develops the motive of capitalist production, enrichment by the exploitation of others’ labour, into the purest and most colossal system of gambling and swindling ...

Heh.

Quoting bjkeefe: One point that struck me just right was when Joseph put some perspective on the US's global military role by saying (paraphrasing) "imagine if the US provided health care for the whole world, for free." I could hear conservative heads exploding.

What do you mean by "conservative heads exploding"? Most conservatives/non-progressives already know the Western world piggy backs on the U.S. Armed Forces. I'm also with Unit on foreign aid. The countries that have a higher per capita foreign aid contribution than the U.S. only have one because it's a mathematical phenomenon. The smaller you are, the more you give. It's like rating the countries at the Olympics based on their population and how many gold medals they win. If Jamaica wins one gold medal, guess what, they've one more gold medals per capita than the United States or France. That doesn't really tell us anything or mean anything. Even better when it's a country like Fiji or Bermuda. More importantly U.S. citizens donate more to charity than in any other Western country. What our government gives to other people is only the beginning of America's charitable contributions. Bono also thinks G.W. Bush is

I thought you were going to say that greater per capita foreign aid by smaller countries is only made possible by the US military umbrella, i.e. by greater per capita military spending in the US than in Denmark. Had you said that, that would have made sense. What you did say makes no sense whatever, the bit about Olympic medals in smaller countries representing a purely mathematical phenomenon. Per capita anything is the result of a mathematical calculation, that's true, but then you seem to be saying that the result of such a calculation has no political meaning, that there is some fallacy involved in comparing per capita spending on foreign aid between small and large countries. There is no fallacy. The comparison involves completely commensurate political phenomena. Nothing prevents the US from spending as much per capita on foreign aid as relatively rich and much smaller European countries. The fact that it does not do so is something to be explained, e.g. by greater military spending per capita, or simply by different societal preferences, but in no sense is the fact of the difference simply a mathematical phenomenon. The whole point of

I disagree. Their givings in aid look better because they are less populated than the United States. Is Bermuda more athletic than the U.S. because it won one gold medal per it's entire population? Maybe or maybe not. What's left out of the foreign aid equation is what American individuals give in private, and what American companies and individuals give back in ideas and know how. European governments also hold more of their peoples' money than the U.S. government holds (due to higher taxes). So they are able to dole out a higher percentage of their peoples' money than the U.S. government. They have more of it to play with it per capita. The whole "we give more per capita than you do" just bothers me cause it's way too simplistic. It doesn't tell you the whole story. The real problem is that money is getting pulled in a million different directions by a million different causes. Money is needed to fight global warming, HIV/AIDS, water problems, malaria, etc... and instead of doling it out based on a cost-benefit analysis, we just throw money at problems randomly. Very depressing. Generally I'm happy with what the U.S. does. If the

Great diavlog. And by the way, I really recommend Heath's first book Rebel Sell (that's the title in Canada). A brilliant takedown of the counterculture. He wrote it with Andrew Potter, who runs a blog here.

Lyle, what you are saying is nonsense. If Bermuda wins as many medals, or as many gold medals (let's assume some agreed upon point system for tallying medals) in track & field as the US, then it obviously *is* proportionally better at competitive Olympic track & field than the US. There's no way around it. Their medal count per capita is higher. End of story. Maybe they have some "unfair" advantages that would be of interest to you. If you're going to disagree with things like this, I don't understand why you bother posting on the Internet. You might as well deny the standard laws of arithmetic.

Mathematically it is true, but reality is something else. The same applies to foreign aid.

NO, you don't get it. If Jamaica can win as many track & field events in the Olympics as the US, that's a very good indication that Jamaica is more athletic than the US on a per capita basis. That's not a conclusion about a mathematical calculation. It is a conclusion about reality, in this case the reality of competitive track & field. It would mean that Jamaica is a very athletic little country. If you disagree with this, you need to be in a mental institution.

Quoting Lyle: What do you mean by "conservative heads exploding"? Most conservatives/non-progressives already know the Western world piggy backs on the U.S. Armed Forces.

That was the point. Conservatives accept that the world piggy backs on the U.S. Armed Forces, but they would (it is claimed) be outraged if the world piggy backed on U.S. health care to the same degree.

I'm also with Unit on foreign aid. The countries that have a higher per capita foreign aid contribution than the U.S. only have one because it's a mathematical phenomenon. The smaller you are, the more you give. It's like rating the countries at the Olympics based on their population and how many gold medals they win. If Jamaica wins one gold medal, guess what, they've one more gold medals per capita than the United States or France. That doesn't really tell us anything or mean anything. Even better when it's a country like Fiji or Bermuda.

But are foreign aid and gold medals analogous in the relevant respects? Foreign aid can be given in arbitrarily small amounts, but gold medals cannot. You can't give less than one gold medal, but is there a certain amount

Did anybody get to the end? The bit about the history of the insurance industry and the welfare state was fascinating.

Yeah, like I said, the second half was a lot better than the first half, the half devoted to the fallacies of the Right better than the part devoted to Say's Law and the fallacies of the Left.

Quoting Tyrrell McAllister: That was the point. Conservatives accept that the world piggy backs on the U.S. Armed Forces, but they would (it is claimed) be outraged if the world piggy backed on U.S. health care to the same degree.

Perhaps that's what bjkeefe meant, but liberals would be pissed off at that as well. Liberal Europeans have issues with immigrants abusing their own handout systems. So I don't think only conservatives' heads would explode.

Quoting Tyrrell McAllister: But are foreign aid and gold medals analogous in the relevant respects? Foreign aid can be given in arbitrarily small amounts, but gold medals cannot. You can't give less than one gold medal, but is there a certain amount of foreign aid that every country feels obliged to exceed? Is so, why? If not, how is the "gold medal" analogy relevant?

It's not relevant. The only reason I made the analogy was to point out that the "Europe gives more per capita" is a simplistic view of foreign aid. Most people would understand that a small country winning a gold medal at the Olympics games doesn't necessarily make it a more athletic country than say the United States, China or Russia. Simple statistical data often mislead; that's

I don't think that is the point. You just switched the hypothesis from a small country achieving medal parity or superiority with the US to a small country winning a single gold medal. Winning a single gold medal is not analogous to the measurement of per capita foreign aid in Holland. One thing has nothing to do with the other. Your "argument" is crap. Just to clarify, one imagines two analogous metrics, by hypothesis: Olympic medal counts per capita by country in track & field: Jamaica vs. US
Per capita governmental foreign aid by country, Denmark or Holland vs. US. Those are analogous metrics. If you want to make a theoretical point about possibly misleading statistics, then make it. But please stop babbling. Just to anticipate, I understand that one could also measure "total direct foreign aid per capita by country," by adding all forms of private direct foreign aid to governmental foreign aid. However, my guess would be that doing this will narrow the gap between the US and Denmark in foreign aid per capita, but it will not close it. It is true that European countries with relatively big welfare states have less charitable giving per capita than

Ledocs, I never said it was a perfect analogy. It isn't. I only wanted to point out that articulating truths via statistics can be misleading. What Bill Gates and Warren Buffet do to help the world isn't included in the "Europe spends more per capita in foreign in the aid than U.S., for shame" meme. All kinds of facts aren't included in such statements. Numbers can deceive as well as illuminate. That's all I'm saying.