Forgive me Nathan, but if someone is too stupid to make more than $8.70 an hour, what business does anyone have with having a family of four? Simply by knowing how to type I got a job that paid me more that WITH health insurance, dental, optical, 401(k). I do agree that government is subsidizing low-wage workers via rental assistance and controls, Medicaid and other entitlement programs. We could drastically cut the costs of these programs (billions+) by a very simple and inexpensive measure: free birth control for every American. Make the pill and condoms available to EVERY American, subsidized by a tax that would be more than offset by the savings of cutting the above programs. Two individuals living together making $8-$10 an hour could live fairly well even if they never acquired any more education. To expect American taxpayers to fork over their hard-earned dollars for the children of the irresponsible is simply unfair and immoral.

Dominick- a sheep in wolf's clothing.

Did you have any response to the actual argument, or just rhetoric and sanctimony?

Eugenics is an argument worth responding to? Or that working class folks don't have the right to have children?

Or that intelligence is accurately measured by wage rates, the purpose of which is always and everywhere to determine ability, and therefore merit and desert? Or that markets do not produce significant externalities, nor underprovide for the basic needs of many people? Or that there is no need for public goods provision and that benefits provided to some, who are perhaps less advantaged, can not result in a greater degree of equity, nor produce benefits for all?

Nathan, I never referred to eugenics in any manner whatsoever - a person with a Ph.D should be able to address an argument properly. I merely suggest that individuals who cannot afford to care for children should not have them - it is a burden to family and to the children. To have them anyway and expect the taxpayers of any country to pick up the tab is simply wrong - I don't expect people to pay for my children (this excludes charity, which is voluntary, unlike government programs).

As far as John's argument, intelligence determining wage rates, that is irrelevant - an extraordinary intelligence is NOT necessary to acquire skills necessary for a comfortable living, hence my typing example. To address your comment, with the exception of actors, athletes and a few other professions, intelligence does correlate with wages to some degree, but it has nothing to do with the argument I made. Freer markets DO indeed underprovide, as well as overprovide, but on a critically damped scale (the return to equilibrium faster than any other system). The intervention of government ALWAYS leaves the situation under or over damped, resulting in overcorrection, oscillation, and in the end prolonging economic crises. Read carefully this time if you have any responses.

When you say people are "stupid" and don't deserve to have kids because of that, it's the pretty standard leadin to eugenics-- Nazism was just the extreme version; birth control advocates were the originators of the term.

Dominick:

You are perfectly entitled to your opinion, but that is not the same thing as your opinion being thoughtful, well-informed or rational. So it is with perfect entitlements. The implications I drew from your initial post were fair inferences from its contents. The fact of the matter is that markets do fail and underprovide in significant measure and their tendency toward equilibrium has nothing to do with this. Furthermore, government compensation for these failures and government provision of public goods in no wise interfere of necessity with market equilibria, but, to the contrary, can often contribute to the effective functionning of markets where appropriate. And, of course, markets will provide in accordance with the distribution of income they mediate. To claim that fairness and morality are identical with market operations and outcomes and that any interference in these latter is cause for outrage, as effectively you did in your initial post, beggars belief. Case in point: since 1973 the average real wage in the U.S.A. has increased 7%, while labor productivity has increased 66%. As for Medicaid, health care is precisely an instance where government provision as a public good makes eminent sense; the U.S.A. is the only OECD country that does not do so. And as for rent subsidies, or incentives for developers to build affordable rental housing, the U.S.A. used to interfere in the "free market" to that effect, but has long since cut back in that regard, such that rents have been rising for quite some time to the delight of landlords, while an ever increasing proportion of the meager income of the working poor has to be spent on rent. At the same time, middle class home owners can deduct mortgage interest from their income taxes, while a first time home sale is exempt from capital gains tax, a government subsidy not aimed at the poor. As for your apparent claim that the children of the "irresponsibly" poor should not only be made to bear the responsibility for their parents "irresponsibility", but that public good can be expected from this, not a moment's reflection would sustain such a claim. Has it ever occurred to you that the large majority of Americans are descendents of such "irresponsible" poor people?

There are jobs that need doing, such as scrubbing toilets, and one can be sure that the economy will continue to churn out such jobs. The federal minimum wage, $5.15 per hour, stands at its lowest level since 1955 in real terms. Its value in 1968 was $7.75 in current dollars, whereas the per capita GDP is more than double that of 1968. (In the U.K., which has both a lower GDP and productivity rate than the U.S.A., the minimum wage is 5 pounds.) Those who have to do such thankless and unpleasant work are entitled to both a modicum of respect and a decent, livable wage.

You have been sold a bill of goods by the reigning right wing "free market" hegemony. Perhaps you would be better off saving your outrage for the massive tax cuts for the wealthiest members of our society that are plunging our country into deep, long-term and unsustainable deficits to the detriment of all.

Thought I'd chime in on this discussion of wages with my latest "spam". :-)

BANANA REPUBLICANS or universal unions; it’s all or
nothing at all; now or never.

Greetings from San Francisco; soon to become home of
America’s 1968 national minimum wage ($8.50 an hour --
adjusted for inflation); already home to New York City’s 1974
taxi rate ($2.25 a mile -- why I personally moved here); and
perhaps soon even to be the home of universal health care if
and when pending state legislation gets passed (all of which
looks somewhat less remarkable viewed against the
background of an economy which produces $5 today for
every $3 worth of goods and services it produced in 1968;
and $3 for every $2 in 1974).

Can San Francisco’s tiny (representing 1/4 of 1% of
America’s population) liberal flame slowly spread it’s
humanizing labor message across the country or will it’s light
be just the last to flicker out as BANANA REPUBLICANS
complete their mission of transforming America into a political
and economic replica South American states where only the
interests of rich families are looked after.

While the Census bureau web site shows the income of the
TOP 20% of families grew ONLY 87% between 1968 and
2001, another page on the same site reveals AVERAGE
income growing 94% over the same period! What’s wrong
with this picture??? It seems something called top coding in
the family survey part of the census shielded about 1/3 of
national income growth over the 34 year period (by not
counting income above $250,000 up to 1994 nor above $1
million after that) -- which hidden growth was diverted to the
top 5% of families -- enough extra wealth to have almost
doubled the income of every family in America since
reasonably prosperous 1968.

Instead, 20% of American workers now earn less than
L.B.J.’s 1968 minimum ($8.50 an hour) -- and 40% earn less
than what L.B.J.’s minimum might, speculatively but very
practicably, could have grown to ($12 an hour) had it kept it’s
previous 3/4 pace with 2/3 per capita GDP expansion*.

In today’s Democrats-help-a-little and Banana
Republicans-hurt-a-lot political reality, it would take a
legislative miracle to return to the entire nation to the 1968
federal minimum wage. With a Democratic president in the
White House the necessary conditions would exist for the
success of Teddy’s and Hillary’s (God bless’em) 1956
minimum wage replay ($6.75 an hour -- whatever would be left
of that after the 3 year phase-in, beginning how ever many
years from now).

It is plain that the majority of the San Francisco labor force,
as well as California’s and America’s workers cannot live by
liberal PROTECTION alone. What they clearly need in order
to retake their share of American pie is sufficient economic
and political POWER to balance the negotiation scales
against ownership and hold out for a square deal for both.
They now have but 8.5% union representation in private
industry. The only practicable path to labor power is universal
unions and the only practical path to universal unions is a
51% of the vote in Congress mandating all to work under
negotiated union contract.

It is no coincidence that the best paid workers in the first
world are Germans, all of whom work under mandatory, sector
wide labor agreements (wherein everybody performing the
same tasks in the same geographic area works under one
contract -- preventing ownership even from playing one union
site off against another).

Match ownership’s current financial and political hegemony
with 7 times today’s American union leadership and 7 times
today’s union financing and trump same with 80% to 90% of
the vote and America can re-enter the era of
Democrats-help-a-lot and, no longer Banana (a la Ike and
Nixon), Republicans-help-a-little-or-better. America should
long since have outgrown virtually every economic difficulty --
the needed wealth exists among us right now; labor merely
has to have enough imagination to use it’s voting majority to
seize it’s share; or from my next taxi job I may need to write:
“Eich bein ien Berliner”.

[*The Census Bureau uses a lower inflation rate (435% from
1968 to 2001) than the Bureau of Labor Statistics (530%) resulting in
higher growth figures -- because today’s dollar is worth more.
For judging the growth of the minimum wage it is six-of-one,
half-a-dozen-of-the-other: a lower starting point means a
faster finish. For tracking family income, the higher rate
almost wipes out the meager 17% and 23% average gain of
the lowest two family quintiles -- more than wipes at the
bottom of the range. Every on-line inflation calculator I have
seen uses the higher rate.]

Denis Drew
San Francisco
ddrew4u@aol.com

I learned how to type AND use a computer and I still can't find a job that will pay me enough to live comfortably. The reason is because I am not willing to kiss some corporate snob's but to have a job. And as for not being able to support one's child, because of the corporate world not being willing to pay their employees' what they should and down sizing which results in lay offs, some people have been forced to take lower paying jobs just to survive. "Do not judge, least you be judged!"