This is What Pisses Me Off About The Democrats

[Statler Waldorf]

Because of all the money and two years of my life spent gaining it give me some bragging rights and dammit I'm going to use them.

Fair enough.

By-the-way things like that don't invoke a fallacy, the same as calling someone an idiot while presenting a case isn't an ad hominem. It's using authority or an insult in place of an argument (rather than in addition to) that invokes the fallacy.

Appealing to an infallible authority or one with proper credentials is not a fallacy. Look it up.

That's what they originally called themselves.

Source?

Today, in supreme arrogance, they call themselves "The Tea Party" and our corporate controlled media lets them get away with it. I refuse out of respect for our Founding Fathers and the patriots that founded this country. Just because you put a tricorner hat on your head doesn't make you a Founding Father. These people are posers and cosplayers, and bad ones at that.

Tea Party members do not call themselves founding fathers; they merely align themselves with the founding principles.

What part did you have problems with?

Your assertions about theoretical and practical differences, you did not support them with anything. I just know that you are really sensitive when others do the same thing.

Anticipating your competition is an important business skill but aside from that, I'm demonstrating the effects of three different courses of action and why accepting a lower contribution margin is the most rational.

It’s only the most rational if the other two companies did exactly what you said they did. If all companies raise prices that would be equally valid, if they all cut workers that would also be equally valid. Your justification was nothing more than an ad hoc story that in no way necessarily corresponds with reality.

What is your problem here? Four people can't suddenly do the work of five. If they could have, why did you have five people at any time?

People do not work at 100 percent 100 percent of the time.

No rational business person hires extra people for no reason.

No rational business owner takes a loss when they do not have to either, but that was part of your scenario.

If you employ someone, you are already trying to get maximum efficiency in terms of their production or else you were already mismanaging your company before this scenario even got started.

It has nothing to do with mismanagement and everything to do with human nature. People are perfectly capable of picking up the slack so until you provide some actual evidence to support it I reject your assertion.

I do not think that fallacy means what you think it means.

Bingo! That’s so hilarious, I am using it exactly how you use it when you’re whining. It’s funny how you recognize the error only when it is committed against you and not when you commit it.

If you could increase your worker productivity by 25% at any time, why haven't you already done it?

I did not need to. “If you knew you could survive without food for a week then why didn’t you do it all the time?”

And if you have that option now because of some new technology, why wouldn't you do it immediately regardless of what the minimum wage is?

Perhaps I did not know I could until I was faced with adversity. Perhaps I prefer the human touch on my products. This is the problem with these sorts of ad hoc hypotheticals; they prove nothing because they can be used to prove anything.

Sorry, when did "kindness" or "heart" come into my decision making process?

You had no other reason to take the loss because you have no idea what your competitors were doing.

I did say you shouldn't make business decisions out of spite, especially when the course of action is self-destructive. I'm talking about pursuing profit maximization and the most rational course of action toward it. If it happens to work toward a kind end, well, that's nice.

It’s only the most rational course in your contrived scenario which proves nothing. You could also simply be the business which raised prices the least, cut one fewer employee and so on.

You'd be shocked, then.

Seems to undermine the moral argument for a higher minimum wage the left likes to use.

My motive in the scenario I mapped out was servicing my customers and boosting sales, making up for the decreased margin with volume.

Why should you have to decrease your margin in the first place? Simply because the government says so?

Many people have throughout human history but it is beside the point here. It's a distraction and so it is a red herring.

You have to support your assertion that it is indeed a distraction. It seems entirely relevant to me. Machines do not work for minimum wage and raising the minimum wage can cause human labor to be more expensive than mechanized labor; thus increasing unemployment.

Then your grasp of business management is so frail that I'm not sure how to explain anything to you.

How convenient! I call your bluff, and all you can do is personally attack me. Irrational to the core.

...at that company. Read on.

I did. You hired this employee with money you did not have. That only works in Oz and Wonderland.

...at that company. Read on.

I did. You hired this employee with money you did not have. That only works in Oz and Wonderland.

I do after hiring the two workers from my competition. What part of that are you struggling with?

With what money? How do you know there will be demand for 40 more widgets a day? Again you are assigning yourself a level of omniscience that is absurd and therefore proves nothing. You can only afford five employees a day and according to you these employees can never make more than 100 widgets per day. You are stuck.

Why am I "stuck" at 100 per day? What force prevents me from meeting the demand of the markets?

I am using your own parameters. You asserted that employees cannot produce more widgets than they are producing now. Therefore, the fact you have five employees means you cannot make more than 100 per day without more employees. Of course you only have the money to pay five employees so you cannot hire anymore help. You’re stuck.

And even if I couldn't, for some strange reason you haven't explained, why would there not be other entries into the market? Where there is unmet demand, suppliers will enter the market. That is the beauty of capitalism.

Another rescue mechanism appears in this already absurd hypothetical. Markets are not infinite; I found it to be rather unrealistic that you have three widget companies in this market to begin with.
So let’s see, as long as there are no small companies barely getting by, the minimum wage increase is only 2% (Democrats are proposing an increase of over 27%), employers always have the ability to “bite the bullet”, employees have the ability to switch companies without cost, employers are not allowed to automate, employers are omniscient, companies are allowed to hire employees with money they somehow magically know they will make in the future, and the companies operate in a limitless market with fixed demand then raising the minimum wage will not adversely affect anyone! Too bad we’re talking about the real world.

What prevents me from increasing my labor, especially with trained labor ready to go? Are you so dim that you think business can't hire new employees to meet expected demand in the future?

Again, no omniscience allowed. What are you paying them with Monopoly money? See how far you get by telling employees, “You work for me for two weeks and I should have the money to pay you by then if everything that I hope happens really does happen because I for some unknown reason know the future.” Progressive Inc. becomes insolvent and is forced to file for bankruptcy. This increases demand for the other two companies because they do not hire employees that they cannot pay. These scenarios are fun, you can make up whatever you want and present it as fact, I now know why you try to argue in this fashion.

"F". See me after class.

I’d love to tutor you but unfortunately I do not have the time.

When did I say people need to keep their mouths shut? The Koch brothers can go preach on the street corners as well as anyone else. What's unfair is they can buy congress people and buy ad time so their speech is more powerful than anyone else's?

It’s their money, they can spend it however they please.

Everyone's speech must be equal.

According to?

No one should have more speech than anyone else.

According to?

So you think rich people should just be able to buy the government and dominate our political discussions and poor people can go fuck themselves?

Nope, wealthy people are allowed to spend their money however they please. If those who are not wealthy have a problem with that then we should vote for representatives that will not follow the money. I am for preserving the rights of everyone, not merely the non-wealthy.

Hmmmm, what is the definition of fascism again? Government run by corporate interests, I recall. If one of us is a fascist, it sounds like it's YOU.

That’s not the definition of fascism at all. You’re advocating the suppression of individual rights.

Wow. I already read the story that said the US isn't really a democracy anymore and this doofus seems to make it even less democratic.

By standing up for free speech? Nice.

As it is now, you have virtually no say in how our government is run unless you make $1,000,000 or more a year.

My vote counts just as much as a billionaire’s. Fail.

Here's a few truths about job creation: You don't get more and more job from billionaires having more money than they know what to do with.

False, I’ve never worked for a poor person.

You get more jobs when they have a business need to fulfill.

They pursue more endeavors when they have more of their capital.

They aren't going to have any reason to build 300 refrigerators a week if they can only sell 200 refrigertors a week.

This misses the point; they can expand their business and began building other goods or reach other markets.

You want to know what cutting taxes gets you, economically? Regan cut taxes almost immediately after he took office and we went into recession;

You need to get your facts straight. Unemployment in Reagan’s second term was 5.4 percent (compared to 6.7 percent under Carter), the rate of growth of real GDP per capita averaged 3.05% under Reagan (compared to 2.14% under Carter), the poverty level dropped 1.2% during Reagan’s administration.

Dubya spent most of his presidency cutting taxes every time there was any problem and the economy got really fucked over.

What was the average unemployment rate during Bush’s presidency? I’ll wait…

Tax cuts were never a significant part of the Clinton administration, but the economy was BOOMING while he was in office.

Only in his second term when the Republicans took control of congress and told him what bills to sign.

So, tell me, why is it we're emulating the economic practices that led to economic downturn…

You mean the Obama and Carter practices? I have no idea. Fortunately, change is coming.