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Talk:Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012

2012-05-22T19:30:38Z

173.245.56.155: /* Places without state conventions. */ new section

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[[User:GrahamW|GrahamW]] 01:48, 3 May 2012 (MSD)

: Rule 38 is not up for interpretation...it says that the unit rule specifically cannot be used to bind delegates. The unit rule is an archaic rule that was used in the preprimary times whereas a state's delegates would vote beforehand and all the state's delegates are bound by the majority vote of that state at the national convention. It will only effect unbound delegates.[[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.61|173.245.55.61]] 20:46, 8 May 2012 (MSD)

==Delegate count seems off==

The states up through 4/26 have a total delegate load of 1523. This Wiki thus far is only counting 453. It seems like someone is miscounting.

==Links==

[http://www.dailypaul.com/230337/actual-delegate-count-at-mises-wiki Daily Paul original article, 2 May]

[http://www.dailypaul.com/231153/romney-to-get-less-than-50-of-delegates-from-the-early-states Daily Paul article - analysis of early states, 5 May]

[http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/29074.aspx Mises forum thread]

== Places without state conventions. ==

I live in DC and know that the delegates were selected by the campaigns. So Paul and Romney each submitted a slate of delegates. Romney won the primary and so the delegates on his slate are the delegates for DC. There is absolutely no chance to change the outcome, so in DC the primary was truly binding. So give all 16 to Romney.

I believe that Tennessee is also this way, but on a congressional district basis. My guess is that Ohio is too.

Minimum wage

2012-04-26T22:52:14Z

173.245.56.155:

A '''minimum wage''' is a wage rate established by collective bargaining or by government regulation that specifies the lowest rate at which [[labour]] may be employed. The rate may be defined in terms of the amount, period (i.e., hourly, weekly, monthly, etc.), and scope of coverage. For example, employers may be allowed to count tips received by employees as credits toward the mandated minimum-wage level.<ref name="Britannica_minimum_wage">Encyclopædia Britannica. [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/384095/minimum-wage "minimum wage"], Encyclopædia Britannica Online, referenced 2010-06-24.</ref>

{{See also|Price controls}}
==The minimum wage is very good and has no negative effects==
==Effects of the minimum wage==
A minimum wage law is compulsory [[unemployment]]. The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, for anyone to hire anyone else below the level of X dollars an hour. This means, plainly and simply, that a large number of free and voluntary wage contracts are now outlawed and hence that there will be a large amount of unemployment. The minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.<ref name="Rothbard_minimum_wage">Murray Rothbard. [http://mises.org/econsense/ch36.asp Outlawing Jobs: The Minimum Wage, Once More] from Making Economic Sense, Chapter 36. Referenced 2010-06-24.</ref>

A '''minimum wage''' leads to a reduction in the demand for labor and an increase in the supply of labor in the relevant market — usually, the market for low-skill workers. It removes the ability of some workers to compete by accepting lower wages and shuts them out of the labor force. As a result, it reduces job opportunities for these workers.

But there are additional, hidden costs of these interventions, which are more difficult to detect but perhaps more insidious. For example, one effect of a minimum wage is to reduce the availability of on-the-job training, since more resources are required simply to hire and retain a workforce. And further interventions in the labor market (for example, safety regulations and payroll taxes) make it still more costly to employ labor. These burdens together reduce a firm's willingness to hire laborers and — in the long run — must reduce the number of opportunities for those laborers to acquire valuable job skills. Far from increasing opportunities for the working poor, a minimum wage actually restricts their mobility.

Firms faced with minimum wage laws often substitute skilled for unskilled labor. A report from the Show-Me Institute offers an illustrative example: Suppose that a job can be done by either three unskilled workers or two skilled workers. If the unskilled wage is $5 per hour and the skilled wage is $8 per hour, the firm will use unskilled labor and produce the output at a cost of $15. However, if we impose a minimum wage to $6 per hour, the firm will instead use two skilled workers and produce for $16 as opposed to the $18 cost of using unskilled workers. In the "official data" this shows up as a small job loss — in this case, only one job — but we see an increase in average wages to eight dollars per hour in spite of the fact that the least skilled workers are now unemployed.

There is also a hidden social cost in minimum wage policies. Debates over a minimum wage erode social fabric by placing workers and their employers in opposition to one another. While there have been many legitimate reasons for some tension to exist between firms and workers, minimum wage policies set them in unnecessary opposition to one another over employment contracts, which are by nature cooperative and mutually beneficial. Encouraging the view that employment is a raw deal has created needless acrimony. At the margin, this intimidates people and discourages some from becoming employers themselves.

The prohibition of certain kinds of labor contracts also discriminates against — paradoxically — the law-abiding. Just as legal prohibitions on the use and sale of drugs have lured the lawless into the drug trade, prohibitions on certain forms of labor ensure that only those lacking in scruples will be left on the demand side of the market for, say, child labor and the like.

If restrictions, regulations, and price floors create massive deadweight losses, they also create incentives for firms and individuals to evade those restrictions, regulations, and price floors. Those with a comparative advantage in evading (or violating) the law will be most successful; thus, labor market regulation gives implicit encouragement and support to the unscrupulous. Restriction and regulation reduces the relative price of dishonesty, which means we can expect greater levels of it in the marketplace.<ref name="Caden_minimum_wage">Art Carden. [http://mises.org/daily/3478 "The Hidden Costs of a Minimum Wage"], Mises Daily, July 2009, referenced 2010-06-24.</ref>

===Effects on minorities===
Minimum wage is especially harmful for [[Minority|minorities]]. According to a study of two labor economists, Professors William Even (Miami University of Ohio) and David Macpherson (Trinity University), each 10 percent increase in a federal or state minimum wage decreased [[employment]] of white males by 2.5 percent; for Hispanic males, the figure is 1.2 percent. But among black males in this group, each 10 percent increase in the minimum wage decreased employment by 6.5 percent. The effect is similar for hours worked: each 10 percent increase reduced hours worked by 3 percent among white males, 1.7 percent for Hispanic males, and by 6.6 percent for black males. The consequences of the minimum wage for the last subgroup were even more harmful than the consequences of the [[Great Recession|recession]].<ref name="Even_Unequal">William Even and David Macpherson. [http://epionline.org/study_detail.cfm?sid=137 "Unequal Harm: Racial Disparities in the Employment Consequences of Minimum Wage Increases"] (brief), [http://epionline.org/studies/even_5-2011.pdf full study] (pdf), ''Employment Policies Institute'', May 2011. Rferenced 2010-06-24.</ref>

==Empirical research==
For many years it has been a matter of conventional wisdom among economists that the minimum wage causes fewer jobs to exist than would be the case without it. This is simply a matter of price theory, taught in every economics textbook, requiring no elaborate analysis to justify. Were this not the case, there would be no logical reason why the minimum wage could not be set at $10, $100, or $1 million per hour.

Historically, defenders of the minimum wage have not disputed the disemployment effects of the minimum wage, but argued that on balance the working poor were better off. In other words, the higher incomes of those with jobs offset the lower incomes of those without jobs, as a result of the minimum wage

This notion was disputed by the work of three economists: [[David Card]] and [[Alan Krueger]] of Princeton, and [[Lawrence Katz]] of Harvard. Their studies of increases in the minimum wage in California, Texas and New Jersey found no loss of jobs among fast food restaurants that were surveyed before and after the increase. This led the [[Bill Clinton|Clinton Administration]] to advance the theory that modest increases in the minimum wage will have no impact on employment.

However, an extensive body of work demonstrates a different conclusion. [[Joint Economic Committee]] Republicans published a survey of virtually every empirical study on the minimum wage in February, 1995. It concluded that a 10% increase in the minimum wage reduced teenage employment by 1% to 3%.

It also indicated that the minimum wage has wide-ranging negative effects that go beyond [[unemployment]]. For example, higher minimum wages encourage employers to cut back on training, thus depriving low wage workers of an important means of long-term advancement, in return for a small increase in current income. For many workers this is a very bad trade-off.<ref name="Joint_Minimum">Joint Economic Committee Republicans. [http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/50years.htm 50 Years of Research on the Minimum Wage] ([http://www.jec.senate.gov/republicans/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=c876c468-ffca-47ed-9468-7193d734bde9 pdf]), February 15, 1995. Referenced 2011-08-18.</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Links==
* [[Wikipedia:Minimum wage|Minimum wage]] on Wikipedia
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DS0XXFdyfI Good Intentions 2of3 Minimum Wage, Licensing, and Labor Laws with Walter Williams] (video)
* [http://mises.org/daily/3477 Paid and Unpaid Labor] by Art Carden, July 2009
* [http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=157 Minimum Wage, Minimum Tax] by Mark Thornton, November 1996
* [http://mises.org/daily/3261 The Minimum Wage, Discrimination, and Inequality] by Art Carden, January 2009
* [http://mises.org/daily/2130 Mythology of the Minimum Wage] by D.W. MacKenzie, May 2006
* [http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/not-so-fast/teenage-unemployment/ Is Anyone Shocked by High Teenage Unemployment?] by William L. Anderson, August 2010
* [http://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/retrospectives.pdf Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era] (pdf) by Thomas C. Leonard, 2005
* [http://blog.mises.org/16949/the-minimum-wage-and-the-forgotten-man/ The Minimum Wage and The Forgotten Man] by Art Carden, May 2011
* [http://mises.org/daily/5311/Do-We-Really-Need-a-Minimum-Wage Do We Really Need a Minimum Wage?] by Charlie Virgo, May 2011
* [http://www.mises.ca/posts/blog/ontario-sets-minimum-wage-then-subsidizes-it/ Ontario Sets Minimum Wage Then Subsidizes It] by Gregory Cummings, April 2012

[[Category:Interventions]]

Austrian Economics Wiki:2011 article improvement drive/November

2011-12-01T02:47:50Z

173.245.56.155: /* Wheylous */

This is the user contribution page for the [[MisesWiki:2011 article improvement drive]] and the month '''November'''. Contestants should add their contributions to the bottom of the page. In case of any questions please consult the [[MisesWiki:2011 article improvement drive|Talk page]].

==Points summary==
The points will be awarded by the contest's judges according to the [[MisesWiki:2011 article improvement drive#Rules|rules]]. The judges will update the table regularly.

{| class="wikitable" border="1" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"
| '''User / points'''
| Featured article
| Stub created
| Article created
| Extended short article
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| New anniversary
| '''User total'''
|-
| '''Wheylous'''
|
|
| 20
|
|
|
| '''20'''
|-
| '''Matthew'''
|
| 110
| 60
|
|
|
| '''170'''
|}

{| class="wikitable" border="1" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"
|+ '''The points are awarded for achieving the following objectives:'''
| Turned an article into a [[MisesWiki:Featured articles|Featured article]].
| 100 points
|-
| Created a decent [[:Category:Article stubs|Stub]] of at least 500 bytes about a relevant, heretofore uncovered topic.
| 10 points
|-
| Created a decent article of at least 2000 bytes about a relevant, heretofore uncovered topic.
| 20 points
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| 20 points
|-
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| 20 points
|-
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| 5 points
|}

==Contest contributions==
Please sign in to the contest below and add your contributions as they accumulate. The judges will evaluate the number of points and add them to the table below. A simple summary is perfectly sufficient - i.e. I've created pages X, Y and Z, improved A and B, etc. (Check out the previous [[MisesWiki:2011 article improvement drive/September|contest page]] for an example.)

'''Contestants:'''
* Wheylous
* Matthew

=== Wheylous ===
Created:
* Pages: [[Standard Oil]], [[Meat packing]]

=== Matthew ===
Created:
* Stubs: [[Interventionism]], [[Qualitative easing]], [[Imaginary construct]], [[Natural law]], [[Causal-realist economics]], [[Statism]], [[Monetary policy]], [[Business Tides]], [[Usury]], [[Law of diminishing returns]], [[Technology]]
* Pages: [[Perfect competition]], [[Resurrecting Marx]], [[History and Critique of Interest Theories]]

Austrian Economics Wiki:2011 article improvement drive/November

2011-12-01T02:47:11Z

173.245.56.155: /* Wheylous */

This is the user contribution page for the [[MisesWiki:2011 article improvement drive]] and the month '''November'''. Contestants should add their contributions to the bottom of the page. In case of any questions please consult the [[MisesWiki:2011 article improvement drive|Talk page]].

==Points summary==
The points will be awarded by the contest's judges according to the [[MisesWiki:2011 article improvement drive#Rules|rules]]. The judges will update the table regularly.

{| class="wikitable" border="1" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"
| '''User / points'''
| Featured article
| Stub created
| Article created
| Extended short article
| WP article
| New anniversary
| '''User total'''
|-
| '''Wheylous'''
|
|
| 20
|
|
|
| '''20'''
|-
| '''Matthew'''
|
| 110
| 60
|
|
|
| '''170'''
|}

{| class="wikitable" border="1" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"
|+ '''The points are awarded for achieving the following objectives:'''
| Turned an article into a [[MisesWiki:Featured articles|Featured article]].
| 100 points
|-
| Created a decent [[:Category:Article stubs|Stub]] of at least 500 bytes about a relevant, heretofore uncovered topic.
| 10 points
|-
| Created a decent article of at least 2000 bytes about a relevant, heretofore uncovered topic.
| 20 points
|-
| Turned a [[Special:ShortPages|short article]] with less than 500 bytes into a decent article of at least 2000.
| 20 points
|-
| Turned an article originally coming from [[:Category:Mises Wiki articles incorporating text from Wikipedia|Wikipedia]] into original content.
| 20 points
|-
| Added a brand new day page with a relevant anniversary to [[MisesWiki:Anniversaries]].
| 5 points
|}

==Contest contributions==
Please sign in to the contest below and add your contributions as they accumulate. The judges will evaluate the number of points and add them to the table below. A simple summary is perfectly sufficient - i.e. I've created pages X, Y and Z, improved A and B, etc. (Check out the previous [[MisesWiki:2011 article improvement drive/September|contest page]] for an example.)

'''Contestants:'''
* Wheylous
* Matthew

=== Wheylous ===
Created:
* Pages: [[Standard Oil]], [[Meat Packing]]

=== Matthew ===
Created:
* Stubs: [[Interventionism]], [[Qualitative easing]], [[Imaginary construct]], [[Natural law]], [[Causal-realist economics]], [[Statism]], [[Monetary policy]], [[Business Tides]], [[Usury]], [[Law of diminishing returns]], [[Technology]]
* Pages: [[Perfect competition]], [[Resurrecting Marx]], [[History and Critique of Interest Theories]]

Meat packing

2011-11-30T23:41:04Z

173.245.56.155: typo: accound = account

'''Meat packing''' is the industry involved in slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distributing livestock. A review of the history of meatpacking is of interest because the mainstream account of meatpacking sanitation at the turn of the century (or, rather, the lack thereof) appears to refute the theory of free market regulation. A less-discussed claim of mopolistic practices by the "Big Four" meat packers is also relevant.

==Mainstream account of History==

The mainstream record of history regarding meatpacking holds that the meatpacking industry was unregulated before the passage of the [[Federal Meat Inspection Act]], which resulted in unsanitary conditions placing the public at risk of disease. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle increased awareness of the terrible conditions in the meatpacking industry and the awakened public urged a revolted [[Theodore Roosevelt]] to pass meat inspection legislation. The large meatpackers were against the legislation and did not support the actions of Congress. Indeed, the Neill-Reynolds report confirmed the digusting picture of the meatpacking facilities and sealed the nail in the coffin, reaffirming the need for regulation and the inability of the free market to regulate itself.{{Fact}}

==An in-depth reconsideration==

There are a number of factual mistakes that the mainstream record makes.

===Unregulated industry===

The meatpacking industry was not unregulated. At the time Sinclair's book came out, it had been inspected for more than a decade. Congressman E. D. Crumpacker of Indiana noted in testimony before the House Agriculture Committee in June 1906 that not even one of those officials “ever registered any complaint or [gave] any public information with respect to the manner of the slaughtering or preparation of meat or food products”

===Unsanitary conditions===

It must be kept in mind that Upton Sinclair's novel was that - a fiction novel. Though fiction may bring truth to the public, it does not necessarily do so, and this is confirmed by an analysis of the fewer than 12 pages in his book where the meatpacking process itself is discussed [1]. An in-depth look at history will reveal that the allegations made do not hold up. A 1906 report[3] by the Bureau of Animal Industry refuted Sinclair’s severest allegations, characterizing them as “intentionally misleading and false,” “willful and deliberate misrepresentations of fact,” and “utter absurdity.”[2]

Indeed, the report revealed that in some cases the very accounts proposed by Sinclair himself do not stand up to scrutiny:

: There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats.

The report correctly notes that if the water (from condensation) was dripping on the meat, then there could have been no "dried dung of rats," as it would have been moistened [3].

It is important to note some of the other popular allegations:

: as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting, – sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!

The report notes that after careful consideration there had been discovered only one man falling into a vat. The body was promptly recovered and buried.

It is interesting that some two million visitors came to tour the stockyards and packinghouses of Chicago every year, yet it took a novel by an anti-capitalist ideologue to unveil the real conditions to the American public [1].

===Neill-Reynolds report===

Gabriel Kolko, himself a socialist writing on the collusion of big business and government in periods of supposed laissez-faire, assails Neill and Reynolds as “two inexperienced Washington bureaucrats who freely admitted they knew nothing” of the meatpacking process. Indeed, Neill was an economist with no technical knowledge of the packing industry and Reynolds was a civil service lawyer. Neither had been exposed to the mass slaughtering of a packinghouse and were sensitive middle-class individuals [5]. Their own subsequent testimony revealed that they had gone to Chicago with the intention of finding fault with industry practices so as to get a new inspection law passed [1].

===Unhappy packers===

The mainstream account goes on to allege that, of course, big meatpackers were like typical capitalists greatly displeased with the meat legislation. However, as is often done in libertarian critiques, and as supported by socialistic historian Gabriel Kolko, government meat regulation may be more appropriately viewed through the lens of big business turning government to its side.

The big packers were actually enthusiastically in favor of the regulation [1][2][5]. At a government meeting with the large packers, the packers responded to the regulatory proposition with loud applause and praised as a "a wise law" which must be enforced universally and uniformly [5].

The packers had lobbied for regulation of the industry for decades [2]. The book by Sinclair gave them an opportunity to get their bill passed through the Congress at last. There were a few reasons for the meatpackers to want government regulation:

1) Government inspection increases operating costs - Though this seems counter-productive, imposing a large fixed cost on competitors is advantageous to big businesses, because it establishes market barriers that prevent new players from entering the market, thus helping the large trusts gain a larger market share (perhaps this was in retaliation against antitrust claims made by smaller, local meatpackers against the trust, which were proven false as well) [1][2]. The imposition of a fixed cost is significant because entry into the market had in fact been relatively easy without many barriers [5].

2) Stamp of approval to overcome European embargo of meat - Europe had begun passing protectionist bans on American meat under the guise of "diseased meat." The large packers were troubled by this, as they did not want to lose the foreign markets. To circumvent this measure and combat claims of the European governments, the meatpackers wanted a government stamp of approval that would signal safe meat and hence tear down European barriers to meat importation from America.

Sinclair ultimately opposed the meatpacking legislation, having seen it for what it was - a boon for the big packers which hampered competition and the market.

===On Sinclair===

Sinclair was a socialist who sought to spread his political message through his novel. Of course, this hardly renders factual allegations moot, as any man with a sane brain may record facts. However, after the above rebukes of the meatpacking myth, his novel must be resigned to simply being a fiction novel and an exaggeration of conditions to spread a message. Sinclair reveals that the novel was designed "to drive home to the dullest reader" the point that the destruction of the Rudkus family was "the inevitable and demonstrable consequence of an economic system" [4]. "I believe in the Socialist movement" vowed Sinclair, and "if I did not, I should never have written The Jungle" [4].

The case for the veracity of Sinclair diminishes when it surfaces that Sinclair only visited the meatpacking plants thrice - one an "ordinary" guided tour, the second with a correspondent for the British medical journal, the Lancet, and on "the third and last trip, I was in the wake of a lawyer who had been brought up in the Packingtown district" [4]. Sinclair says "I really paid very little attention to the meat question while I was in Chicago" [4].

Furthermore, even socialists themselves rejected Sinclair's work as no more than fiction. Ralph Chaplin, a socialist who grew up in the vicinity of the yards and packinghouses and was living there when the novel appeared said of The Jungle, "I thought it a very inaccurate picture of the stockyards district which I knew so well."[4] Gabriel Kolko, another socialist, dismisses Sinclair and his claims as propagandist [1][5].

==References==

[1] http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/ideas-and-consequences-of-meat-and-myth/

[2] http://www.libertariannews.org/2010/09/17/meat-packers-rape-you-and-you-love-it/

[3] http://books.google.com/books?id=xGU-AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Hearings+Before+the+Committee+on+Agriculture...on+the+So-called+%22Beveridge+Amendment%22+to+the+Agricultural+Appropriation+Bill,&source=bl&ots=3j6Qi_MOvS&sig=5n7JIhK1-PVpyaDe8GEb7-froBI&hl=en&ei=LNCTTIXbGYL2tgOlrqDACg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

[4] https://journals.ku.edu/index.php/amerstud/article/viewFile/2885/2844

[5] http://books.google.com/books?id=jTyfQk1zMTYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=triumph+of+conservatism&hl=en&ei=ISTHTvSBAsTf0QHxqMko&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=meat&f=false