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#21
10-08-2005, 01:23 PM
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Re: Conservative vs. Liberal viewpoints
[ QUOTE ]
I agree that the general public has their heads up their asses when it comes to anything having to do with economics. Otherwise they'd understand that under Reagan and Bush one unemployment went up, up, then up some more. Under Clinton (I'm definitely no Clinton fan, but hey, facts are facts) unemployment went down, down, then down a little bit more. Welcome Bush 2, unemployment started going up, up, up... [/ QUOTE ] The problem with your argument is you list an effect, but you don't list the correct cause. This is known as false cause, http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/cause.html. Reagan inherited several recessions from Carter, and under Reagan the economy experienced sustained economic growth through the '80s. Bush's recession began March 21, 2001 and was excellerated by the attacks on 9/11, the tech bubble, and the corporate scandals, http://www.nber.org/cycles/november2001/. [ QUOTE ] What I'm saying, stephan, is that you just demonstrated a "I get all my news from Fox" mentality. Blaming everything on liberals is tantamount to saying "I'm blinded by ideology." I'm a liberal but I'll never go as far as to say, or naively believe, that economic problems are categorically caused by conservatives. [/ QUOTE ] I don't watch Fox News, and I don't see why I must watch Fox News because I know how the economy works. I learned economics while taking Macroeconomics, and Microeconomics. I don't see how you could still be an economic liberal after taking these courses. Btw, I never said that liberals are too blame for all the problems, I said that they usually look to fix problems (high rent prices, foreign competition, etc) by instituting policies that help a few people while hurting larger groups. [ QUOTE ] Oh yeah, Clinton also raised the minimum wage. Too bad (for conservatives, I guess, good for everyone that benefitted) unemployment *gasp* dropped, rather than increased. I not quite sure if that's a complete refutation of conservative economic thought, but if I believed something and saw a complete contradiction, I'd have to question some things. [/ QUOTE ] Raising the minimum wage raised unemployment. Unemployment dropped because the economy was expanding rapidly under the tech boom, and the recession ended when Clinton took office. The economic growth offset the raise in minimum wage. Raising min wage only causes a small raise in unemployment unless the min wage raise is very large. Raising min wage was just an example of a policy that doesn't help the economy. I didn't infer that raising the min wage causes massive unemployment. I suggest that you educate yourself and take a few economics courses, or at least read a book or too. You might want to pick up a philosophy book too, because you use false cause quite a bit. 
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#22
10-08-2005, 01:36 PM
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Re: Conservative vs. Liberal viewpoints
[ QUOTE ]
Oh yeah, Clinton also raised the minimum wage. Too bad (for conservatives, I guess, good for everyone that benefitted) unemployment *gasp* dropped, rather than increased. I not quite sure if that's a complete refutation of conservative economic thought, but if I believed something and saw a complete contradiction, I'd have to question some things. [/ QUOTE ] Clinton raised min wage, unemployment went down, so the generally accepted theory that min wage hurts employment must be wrong. That is some rock solid reasoning right there. And you are lecturing people about not understanding economics.
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#23
10-08-2005, 03:31 PM
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Re: Conservative vs. Liberal viewpoints
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Oh yeah, Clinton also raised the minimum wage. Too bad (for conservatives, I guess, good for everyone that benefitted) unemployment *gasp* dropped, rather than increased. I not quite sure if that's a complete refutation of conservative economic thought, but if I believed something and saw a complete contradiction, I'd have to question some things. [/ QUOTE ] Clinton raised min wage, unemployment went down, so the generally accepted theory that min wage hurts employment must be wrong. That is some rock solid reasoning right there. And you are lecturing people about not understanding economics. [/ QUOTE ] It MUST be wrong! I mean there is 0 chance that other causes made unemployment drop even more than raising minimum wages hurt unemployment.
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#25
10-10-2005, 01:10 PM
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Re: Conservative vs. Liberal viewpoints
Interesting to read everyone's responses. A few comments:
- I was not trying to frame this as the crux of the debate between liberals and conservatives, nor was I trying to say that this situation occurs 100% of the time. However, it seems to happen more often than not. - I like these kinds of questions because it gets to the heart of the matter of why people disagree. It's interesting to find out not only what people believe, but why they believe it.
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