Economics Questions

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

Scott Jefferies — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:30:42 GMT

texanhottie:
oh well who ever has the highest contributions of course but at least these men have some guidlines and arent allowed to get away with murdering 146 teenage girls and young women with nothing but a slap on the wrist

What does workers beating or murdering women have to do with free trade? It seems like there was a legal problem with respect to the enforcement of trade. You don't need to regulate working conditions or pay in order to stop owners from physically beating their workers. You need an uncorrupted judicial system.

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

fakename — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:07:43 GMT

meambobbo:
That wouldn't make sense if only men had a min wage. Then men, not women, would be unemployed.

I figured that men were in high demand whereas women were in low demand so to pay a minimum wage for men wouldn't have had such a huge effect but a minimum wage for women would've caused them to be less marketable. Hence there was only a minimum wage for men because most women were unemployed.

And weren't there minimum wages at the state level?

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

eliotn — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:56:36 GMT

laminustacitus:
however, most of these laws were passed when the free-market had already done it.

The ironic thing about these laws is that there are occasional exceptions where people want to hang these rules, such as a kid who really wants to work, but cannot because the government said so with bullets.

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

nibbler491 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:22:29 GMT

Not to mention the minimum wage was part of the New Deal, which came about 20 years after this incident.

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

meambobbo — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:46:39 GMT

fakename:

texanhottie:
Men back then had a minimum wage where as women didnt

Is this what could've caused the unemployment in women in those days -another gov. intervention?

That wouldn't make sense if only men had a min wage. Then men, not women, would be unemployed.

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

Saan — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:35:41 GMT

Read a some of the other threads, follow the links. antiwar.com is great. fee.org is good. You can get a ton of stuff free right here at this site. It's credible information.

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

fakename — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:58:31 GMT

texanhottie:
Men back then had a minimum wage where as women didnt

Is this what could've caused the unemployment in women in those days -another gov. intervention?

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

poppies — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:33:39 GMT

nibbler491:
Before the incident happened, the ladies went on strike for 13 weeks, but actually ended up getting a pay CUT because the owners of the company sent out thugs to beat the shit out of the woman to get them to come back to work.

Free society version:

- the owners send out thugs to beat the sh!t out of the women to get them to come back to work,

- the workers sell their claim on restitution for the violence to a justice investor,

- a private judge orders a compensatory payment, agreed to by the owner's insurance company in order to avoid negative reputational effects, which bankrupts the owners,

- the justice investor gets a sweet return,

- the women get nice sums also, and get new jobs in a world in which business owners know there will be no coercive government to backstop or any tacitly approve such abusive actions

texanhottie:
One bad apple spoils the bunch that is why things like free trade that rely on the honesty system never work.

Free trade doesn't rely on honesty at all, it just requires that actors aren't shielded from the cost of their actions. This tends to encourage, but not guarantee, honest transactions. The lack of major overhauls to the risk budgets of banks following the recent economic meltdown shows what happens when there is a dearth of such organic accountability.

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

liberty student — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:36:54 GMT

America has never had a laissez-faire economy. You misunderstand the problem with the relationships between these women, and their employers.

Where the employers used force, or the threat of force they were engaging in immoral behaviour. But where the women choose to go to work each day, then their conditions could only be alleviated by

(1) taking a better job somewhere else

(2) competing directly against the people gave them jobs.

The corporatist system, prevents people from freely competing (as in #2), and thus, the women had limited options.

The government has always been complicit with big business, and special interests, then and now.

Government cannot solve problems, it is the problem.

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

texanhottie — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:28:04 GMT

yes they were able to do this through capatalism and no they werent the government but these women didn't even make a dent in the laissez faire machine it was the government that ultimately shut these practices down these charities that supported these women didnt gain anything in the walk out except to lose money because the women went back to work with pay cuts. so in short the charities didnt really do a damn thing except bring the problems to the fore front it was the government that fixed them. and now dont get me wrong im not a democrat im republican and i believe that in this day and time where america is at we can have a laissez faire economy because we are a service economy and we are a stronger more developed nation than we were back in the 1900's back then we were not an economic power so we did not fair so well in a capitalistic society but now that we are more serviced oriented i say go for it. the only problem is is that our government now sees it fit to take over companies that aren't doing "so well" and i say let them collapse and crumble they should have made a better product. but do i believe in capitalism now yes for back then no.

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

DanielMuff — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:18:35 GMT

texanhottie:

they were middle to upper class women who had sensitive dispostions and nothing better to do with there time than to find a cause and run with it

So they weren't the government.

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

liberty student — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:13:43 GMT

texanhottie:

they were middle to upper class women who had sensitive dispostions and nothing better to do with there time than to find a cause and run with it

So they were charitable, because they were enabled by capitalism.

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

texanhottie — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:08:53 GMT

they were middle to upper class women who had sensitive dispostions and nothing better to do with there time than to find a cause and run with it

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

DanielMuff — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:04:07 GMT

texanhottie:

ok now the fact that your missing here is that the reason the women went on strike for so long was because they were backed by charities. It was 146 that died all together in the fire. Men back then had a minimum wage where as women didnt. Free trade is like communism it looks great on paper but in practice it totally sucks for a large amount of people. In this time period you had men like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie come to power and it was they that ran this country not the government. One bad apple spoils the bunch that is why things like free trade that rely on the honesty system never work. Now do i approve of the government becoming a major player no. I believe that there should be some guidlines like working conditions and hours, pay, etc. But on all other things let the businesses have there way. Balance is the key .

p.s. theres a link you can go to

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/

And who were these charitable beings? Couldn't have been the capitalists, because they were greedy. Coulnd't have been the workers of world, they were poor.

Re: Working conditions in the early 1900s

texanhottie — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:03:32 GMT

oh well who ever has the highest contributions of course but at least these men have some guidlines and arent allowed to get away with murdering 146 teenage girls and young women with nothing but a slap on the wrist

and that was just a little piece of info everyone was missing bc that one dude said that they were missing some info