Strontium Dog wrote:

Macdoc wrote:I really detest the term free trade as there is no such thing as a free market either - the latter is an oxymoron.

It's not helped by the fact that there seems to be several competing definitions of "free market". When I talk about a free market, I mean a market in which competitors are free to operate, where barriers to entry are low and nobody can rig the game. When Leftist critics talk about a "free market", they seem to believe it's a market that is entirely free from regulation, a laissez-faire free for all in which anything goes. I think the latter is a straw man that doesn't really exist outside the wet dreams of anarcho-capitalists or the nightmares of socialists.

I agree with your description above. I don't agree, though, that a freer market is necessarily better than a less free one (in terms of the correct usage of "free market" that you've used above).

The point is that the current system is designed to be optimal for the developed world, while somewhat better (than status quo) for the developing world.

Not convinced on this and think it's too broad brush.

If you look at some bi-lateral agreements they take differences into account between first world and developing economies to aid both.

You've got too much faith in Western governments and their corporate sponsors. I researched this quite a bit a few years ago, and the system was heavily skewed towards developed countries. I don't even know why anyone would be surprised by that. But perhaps it's changed in the last five years.

You are painting far too broad a brush. General comments without back up or specific observations.

All governments will attempt favourable outcomes for their own situation.

Show me a bilateral trade agreement that is heavily tilted and unfavorable to one party only.

chairman bill wrote:

UtilityMonster wrote:I don't see what practical policy implications are derived from this.

It's quite simple. Resources are unfairly & unjustly apportioned. This gives some people an advantage that they would not usually have, and one that many can exploit to their benefit, without those denied that advantage having an opportunity to do similar. Capitalism is predicated on some having ownership & others not, yet the disparity in ownership is based on unfairness & often historical illegality and/or acts of power over others.

The practical policy implications are for a society that seeks to right these historical wrongs & provide a fairer society. That will not be a capitalist society.

Except I'm skeptical anyone has a clue how to reapportion property to be "fair." Everyone has a different conception. Should Native Americans be given the entire continent of America? That is technically correct, on the basis of historical right and wrong. Yet there would be bad consequences from attempting something like that. Likewise, I think there would be bad consequences from attempting any kind of mass transfer of property of the kind you speak of. Plus, we are already redistributing money from the wealthy to the poor via taxation. In the United States, the top 1% of taxpayers pay as much in income tax as the bottom 95%. This is the kind of wealth transfer from those who may have unfairly procured property to those who have been disadvantaged. Whether it is adequate or not to fix historical wrongs is besides the point, I think. What matters is not who was unfairly wronged 50 years, 100 years, or 1,000 years ago, but instead what is the proper course going forward to maximize human well-being. I don't think upending our way of doing things to "fairly" distribute things is the right approach.

Loren Michael wrote:
There may still be a deep divide between words and action. I'm only less sure of that outside of America, not saying that it's only an American thing. My wholly unstudied impression is that there's still a protect-the-insiders, advancement-is-dependent-on-connections dynamic that the right protects in a lot of other places.

My impression is that this is just as common on the left, especially in developing nations and countries where both parties are corrupt. Regardless, the point is that, historically and presently, left wing parties are more hostile to free trade, and right wing parties are more friendly to it. Moreover, right wing parties advocate for it on the correct principles more often, even if in practice they implement different measures for cheap political gains at the expense of society.

In regards to the article link, that is a fantastic example, and I thank you for sharing it. The U.S. immigration system needs to be heavily overhauled, paving the way for all intelligent, qualified professionals to have easy access to relocating here if they so desire. The AMA is an example of the kind corrupt creators of barriers to entry to drive up wages for professionals at the expense of the broader public, which exacerbates income inequality. Having said that, I think having NAFTA is better than not having it, and it was passed by and most forcefully argued by a Democratic president, interestingly enough.

epete wrote:
What's "clear" is that you aren't following your own argument. A couple of posts ago you were telling us it is basically impossible to fire a teacher. So which is it? Is it impossible, or are administrators protecting rubbish teachers?

Definitely an incisive point. However, I never said it was impossible to fire teachers, and what I think you meant to say was "Is it impossible and administrators are protecting rubbish teachers, or are they giving teachers more benefit of the doubt do to a cognizance of the challenges they face at lower income schools?" I think both are the case and need not be mutually exclusive. What I meant to convey was that teachers at failing public schools are sympathized with and not viewed as bad necessarily by the general public despite producing abysmal results for their students in the way teachers would be at magnet schools or private schools. I think people, and that includes administrators, understand that teachers at failing urban schools face unique hurdles in providing a decent education to their students. Indeed, I think administrators would have to be idiots to not recognize that fact.

epete wrote:
In any market that doesn't protect the weak from the strong, then it by far will favour the strong. That's why inequality grows the more protective/redistributive regulations disappear. In terms of trade, the West has the strength due to their economic size, military power, and mature productive industries. That's a massive power imbalance. The weak need sheltering from this overpowering imbalance.

I fail to see how the power imbalance has any detrimental effects on the poor. They benefit from the power imbalance. It allows them to leapfrog technologies, benefit from wealthy countries' governmental expertise, and benefit from the outsourcing of manufacturing and service jobs that they would otherwise not receive.

epete wrote:
I think job security is important for all employees, as a matter of both fairness and good social practice. That's why I support Unions, as without them we would all be working 14 hour days for scraps.

Uh, I guess that is why the 90%+ of workers in the US who aren't members of unions work 14 hour days for scraps.

epete wrote:
I do think, however, we need to find the right balance between giving job security and good support to our employees, and being able to let the underperforming ones go.

Then you should oppose tenure on the basis of # of years worked, which is how it is currently doled out. It prevents us from firing the teachers unless they blatantly violate rules, even if they are absolutely horrendous, as they sometimes are.

epete wrote:Definitely. But I think every worker should be paid more too.

Sure, then we could have inflation and no one would be wealthier in real terms.

epete wrote:
Depends on the metrics. As I said, it seems that most of the metrics are not necessarily the best things to teach the students. And doing a sort of pre- and post- comparison of achievement of a certain teacher's students will run into statistical challenges due to the small numbers involved and the large number of confounding factors.

So, in principle, I agree with you, but in practice I'm yet to be convinced how this would work.

Why is a standardized test that evaluates reading and math ability inadequate in at least partially answering this question? These tests are rigorous and holistic, take multiple days to complete, and genuinely provide us an excellent indication of a given child's capacity to read. Other factors definitely play a role in how well students do other than teaching performance, but I see no reason why it is impossible to roughly quantify those. Plus, huge increases in student performance after one year or no performance improvement at all must be accounted for at least in part by teacher performance. I'd rather have an imperfect measuring tool than none at all.

Macdoc wrote:You are painting far too broad a brush. General comments without back up or specific observations.

Perhaps you should pay more attention. I've listed two specific examples earlier.

All governments will attempt favourable outcomes for their own situation.

Of course. So why is it you think powerful governments can't negotiate agreements that favour them over less powerful governments?

Show me a bilateral trade agreement that is heavily tilted and unfavorable to one party only.

I assume you mean "favourable", not "unfavourable". Either way, I won't be showing you anything of the sort, as this is a strawman.

UtilityMonster wrote:

epete wrote:
What's "clear" is that you aren't following your own argument. A couple of posts ago you were telling us it is basically impossible to fire a teacher. So which is it? Is it impossible, or are administrators protecting rubbish teachers?

Definitely an incisive point. However, I never said it was impossible to fire teachers, and what I think you meant to say was "Is it impossible and administrators are protecting rubbish teachers, or are they giving teachers more benefit of the doubt do to a cognizance of the challenges they face at lower income schools?" I think both are the case and need not be mutually exclusive. What I meant to convey was that teachers at failing public schools are sympathized with and not viewed as bad necessarily by the general public despite producing abysmal results for their students in the way teachers would be at magnet schools or private schools. I think people, and that includes administrators, understand that teachers at failing urban schools face unique hurdles in providing a decent education to their students. Indeed, I think administrators would have to be idiots to not recognize that fact.

I think you are grasping at straws here. You can't have it both ways. You can't rail against teachers unions for making it extremely hard to fire a teacher, but on the other hand claim that it is actually eminently possible to fire teachers but the administrators are protecting them. Your argument is confused.

epete wrote:
In any market that doesn't protect the weak from the strong, then it by far will favour the strong. That's why inequality grows the more protective/redistributive regulations disappear. In terms of trade, the West has the strength due to their economic size, military power, and mature productive industries. That's a massive power imbalance. The weak need sheltering from this overpowering imbalance.

I fail to see how the power imbalance has any detrimental effects on the poor. They benefit from the power imbalance.

They can benefit, but they don't always. They can also benefit in some areas and suffer in others. Once again, you present a highly simplified rebuttal to a complex issue. It's also a naive view to think that the party with the power advantage won't use it in a way that can be detrimental to the party without it.

It allows them to leapfrog technologies, benefit from wealthy countries' governmental expertise, and benefit from the outsourcing of manufacturing and service jobs that they would otherwise not receive.

It also allows their workers to work in near torturous conditions with little or no benefits. Just because this is better than what they had before, doesn't mean it is "good". As I explained earlier.

epete wrote:
I think job security is important for all employees, as a matter of both fairness and good social practice. That's why I support Unions, as without them we would all be working 14 hour days for scraps.

Uh, I guess that is why the 90%+ of workers in the US who aren't members of unions work 14 hour days for scraps.

WTF? You don't have to be a union member to gain the benefits of unions both past and present. What a ridiculous argument. Have you banned yourself yet?

epete wrote:
I do think, however, we need to find the right balance between giving job security and good support to our employees, and being able to let the underperforming ones go.

Then you should oppose tenure on the basis of # of years worked, which is how it is currently doled out. It prevents us from firing the teachers unless they blatantly violate rules, even if they are absolutely horrendous, as they sometimes are.

Perhaps I do oppose it. But you haven't explained it properly yet. I think a balance needs to be struck. And as with all these types of things, when a balance is struck there will inevitably be some 'false positives' and 'false negatives', so to speak.

epete wrote:Definitely. But I think every worker should be paid more too.

Sure, then we could have inflation and no one would be wealthier in real terms.

Will you be banning yourself over this? Wages increase all the time. Inflation doesn't get out of hand. It is about how it's done and how monetary policy is handled.

epete wrote:
Depends on the metrics. As I said, it seems that most of the metrics are not necessarily the best things to teach the students. And doing a sort of pre- and post- comparison of achievement of a certain teacher's students will run into statistical challenges due to the small numbers involved and the large number of confounding factors.

So, in principle, I agree with you, but in practice I'm yet to be convinced how this would work.

Why is a standardized test that evaluates reading and math ability inadequate in at least partially answering this question?

Because there are too many confounding factors, as mentioned already. A test can't tell you anything about home life of a student.

These tests are rigorous and holistic, take multiple days to complete, and genuinely provide us an excellent indication of a given child's capacity to read. Other factors definitely play a role in how well students do other than teaching performance, but I see no reason why it is impossible to roughly quantify those. Plus, huge increases in student performance after one year or no performance improvement at all must be accounted for at least in part by teacher performance. I'd rather have an imperfect measuring tool than none at all.

It depends on how imperfect it is and what is done with the results from that tool. If you are firing teachers on statistically dodgy information, then that's not a good situation. A far better way to help these kids at the bottom of the scale would be to improve their communities. We could go down the rabbit hole with this. I'll start ranting about neoliberalism, and I don't really want to take the discussion in that direction. My brain gets angry. Bad brain!

UtilityMonster wrote:1. The Right has historically been the ideology defensive of free trade.

Complete bullshit. The US "Right's" current ideology is that they have historically been proponents of free trade. The reality is somewhat different.

If the US had followed the principles of free trade, it would have gone with it's "comparative advantage" of primary production for European markets and not protected its nascent domestic industries, resulting in a very different country from the one you live in. There was - historically - fuck all support for "free trade" in the US from either the "right" or "left" until it found itself the most powerful economy in the world post-WWII.

UtilityMonster wrote:They are absolutely correct that free trade is good for all parties involved.

Depends upon what your definition of "free trade" is.

Successful economies have historically used protectionism to shield their domestic industries from well-established foreign competition while they developed. Unsuccessful economies have historically used protectionism to shield their domestic industries from competition whilst the cronies of those in power lined their pockets.

You are looking only at those countries that failed to use protectionism successfully and drawing the conclusion that it cannot be used successfully.

Successful economies have historically used protectionism to shield their domestic industries from well-established foreign competition while they developed

Yup see both China and Japan.

Unsuccessful economies have historically used protectionism to shield their domestic industries from competition whilst the cronies of those in power lined their pockets.

Yup - see Britain

Macdoc wrote:

Unsuccessful economies have historically used protectionism to shield their domestic industries from competition whilst the cronies of those in power lined their pockets.

Yup - see Britain

Actually, Britain is an example of both. It originally developed then later stagnated under different protectionist models.

Nicko wrote:

UtilityMonster wrote:1. The Right has historically been the ideology defensive of free trade.

Complete bullshit. The US "Right's" current ideology is that they have historically been proponents of free trade. The reality is somewhat different.

This is most certainly inadequate to call what I said "complete bullshit." The North/South divide in the U.S. was not a clear left/right distinction, but was instead two very different constituencies advocating for what they believed would benefit them the most. When leftist policies benefited the North and not the South, the North advocated for them and the South opposed them, and vice versa. Plus, I was referring to the world. The right, as a global ideology, has been more supportive of free trade. Did Marx support free trade? Absolutely not. Did the Austrian and Monetarist schools? Yes.

I'm not denying that, as Loren already mentioned, there was hypocrisy on both sides of the political spectrum. I am, however, referring to the ideologies in their purest form, what they purport to believe rather than what they necessarily implement.

Nicko wrote:

UtilityMonster wrote:They are absolutely correct that free trade is good for all parties involved.

Depends upon what your definition of "free trade" is.

Successful economies have historically used protectionism to shield their domestic industries from well-established foreign competition while they developed. Unsuccessful economies have historically used protectionism to shield their domestic industries from competition whilst the cronies of those in power lined their pockets.

You are looking only at those countries that failed to use protectionism successfully and drawing the conclusion that it cannot be used successfully.

Okay, I wouldn't dispute there are some instances where protectionism has been a good idea. Nevertheless, my contention is something like 9/10 times or more protectionism has been a bad idea. Protectionism is only a viable ideology because the interest groups that support it, such as manufacturers who will have their jobs go overseas, are much more vocal about their position than the millions of consumers who will benefit, albeit just a little, from globalized trade. Look at the difference between developing countries that have received huge outsources of jobs from the West and those that haven't. The difference in growth is staggering. Look at how much consumers benefit from foreign competition with local industries. The U.S. car manufacturers were complacent and built cars that just broke after 5 years or so, but after trade opened up with Japanese car manufacturers, U.S. auto company car sales plummeted and we saw investment in new design features and general improvements to cars. Increased global competition almost always has this effect. It benefits consumers (aka everyone) immensely.

epete wrote:
I think you are grasping at straws here. You can't have it both ways. You can't rail against teachers unions for making it extremely hard to fire a teacher, but on the other hand claim that it is actually eminently possible to fire teachers but the administrators are protecting them. Your argument is confused.

Your argument relies on the assumption administrators are idiots who fail to recognize that educating poor students is much more difficult than educating the wealthy. Does that strike you as a reasonable assumption?

epete wrote:
It also allows their workers to work in near torturous conditions with little or no benefits. Just because this is better than what they had before, doesn't mean it is "good". As I explained earlier.

This is equivalent to putting a child who is two years behind grade level through an advanced tutoring program, having the child improve so to only be one grade level behind, and saying "well, the child still isn't at grade level, so what we did was not 'good'".

The only way your argument makes sense is if there is a mutually exclusive alternative to free trade that improves people's lives more rapidly. If something like this exists, please, inform the world about it. It is just a shame the thousands of development economists have failed to discover it yet.

epete wrote:

epete wrote:
I think job security is important for all employees, as a matter of both fairness and good social practice. That's why I support Unions, as without them we would all be working 14 hour days for scraps.

Uh, I guess that is why the 90%+ of workers in the US who aren't members of unions work 14 hour days for scraps.

WTF? You don't have to be a union member to gain the benefits of unions both past and present. What a ridiculous argument. Have you banned yourself yet?

You say that you support unions because of the historical good they have done (I would acknowledge they have indeed done a lot of good, historically), but that is no reason to support them now if they are detrimental to the economic welfare of the country, which is what I am maintaining. Also, I'd love for you to elaborate on how non-unionized workers benefit from the 10% of US workers who are unionized (most of whom are public employees - teachers union, police union, firefighters union - who divert public resources from benefiting the rest of the population and which cannot bankrupt the government the way private unions can so have absurdly large paychecks relative to private sector counterparts). Evidently we would be working 14 hour days for scraps without them? We have labor laws in this country that apply to all workers everywhere, unionized or not. Unions scare away business, reduce profitability, and add huge costs onto the goods they produce putting those businesses at a competitive disadvantage (over $2,000 of the cost of each car made by GM goes toward paying union members' pensions vs. zero for Hyundai, Toyota, etc.).

epete wrote:
Perhaps I do oppose it. But you haven't explained it properly yet. I think a balance needs to be struck. And as with all these types of things, when a balance is struck there will inevitably be some 'false positives' and 'false negatives', so to speak.

What else do you want to know about it?

epete wrote:

epete wrote:Definitely. But I think every worker should be paid more too.

Sure, then we could have inflation and no one would be wealthier in real terms.

Will you be banning yourself over this? Wages increase all the time. Inflation doesn't get out of hand. It is about how it's done and how monetary policy is handled.

If everyone started getting paid more without any increase in productivity or economic growth, that would just result in inflation.

The ideology is just dripping.

Responsible unions reduce inequality.
Norway and Sweden, Japan and Australia are all strongly unionized and higher quality of life and less economic disparity.
Mind you they don't piss it away on military and foolish healthcare structure.

This is a list of countries or dependencies by income inequality metrics, including Gini coefficients, according to the United Nations (UN), the World Bank, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Because the underlying household surveys differ in method and in the type of data collected, the distribution data are not strictly comparable across countries.
The Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1, where 0 corresponds with perfect equality (where everyone has the same income) and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality (where one person has all the income—and everyone else has zero income). Income distribution can vary greatly from wealth distribution in a country. See: List of countries by distribution of wealth. Income from black market economic activity is not included and is the subject of current economic research.[1][2]

The drift away from unions in some regions notably marks an increase in income disparity over time...

At the top...along with any number of other social democratic states in Europe.



Then some of the wealthier states like Canada that are losing their union base and hollowing the middle class. The poorest in Canada are earning 20% less than a couple of decades ago.
Costs are up - especially shelter, wages are not.



then the US is keeping good company

A good example of a pure free market is Bangledesh.

Even a few dead is part of the system.

Scot Dutchy wrote:A good example of a pure free market is Bangledesh.

Even a few dead is part of the system.

Indeed, but 500 fatalities shouldn't be seen as being "a few." It's a huge number for a single event.

Strontium Dog wrote:

Macdoc wrote:I really detest the term free trade as there is no such thing as a free market either - the latter is an oxymoron.

It's not helped by the fact that there seems to be several competing definitions of "free market". When I talk about a free market, I mean a market in which competitors are free to operate, where barriers to entry are low and nobody can rig the game. When Leftist critics talk about a "free market", they seem to believe it's a market that is entirely free from regulation, a laissez-faire free for all in which anything goes. I think the latter is a straw man that doesn't really exist outside the wet dreams of anarcho-capitalists or the nightmares of socialists.

Seems to me that "leftist critics" often think a so-called "free market" is "entirely free from regulation, a laissez-faire free for all in which anything goes" because this is what advocates of a "free market" usually mean and often prefer, people like Ron Paul for example or the deregulators of the Tea Baggers who, for example, voted in the House to disband the EPA.

A regulated market is by definition not a "free market," is it?

Your condescending attitude aside, it appears to me you've missed what free marketers actually want. Hell, they don't even want government, let alone government regulations, "Our goal is to reduce the size of government so that it can be drowned in a bathtub,'.is an infamous mantra from the right.

UtilityMonster wrote:On economic issues, I am curious what right wing parties are right about. I'm pressed for time so I won't write out holistic defenses of these policies, but will instead take up defenses for whichever ones you disagree with. Here are a few:

1. The Right has historically been the ideology defensive of free trade. They are absolutely correct that free trade is good for all parties involved.
2. The Right in the U.S. has been openly commenting on the need to cut entitlement programs. They are correct that, in order to be fiscally solvent in future, we will have to cut entitlement programs. However they are wrong that:
a. Those programs need to or should be cut now.
b. About what programs need to be cut and how to cut them.
c. That this should be done without any revenue increases.
3. The Right has typically been more cognizant of the existence of market efficiencies and the good that markets can do.
a. Admittedly, they see market efficiencies were none exist far too often.
4. In the US, they correctly support charter schools and attempts at decentralizing education, reducing the power/influence of teachers' unions, and creating competition between schools to improve children's educational outcomes.

I am sure I could think of more, but I've started actually having difficulty thinking of more at this point, so I'll stop here.

While I only listed a few issues (let me know if you agree/disagree, whether you think there are other issues they are right about) with a number of caveats, I do think these are important issues, principally.

This thread is a joke, right?

The American electorate rejected Republican mantras in the 2012 election, utterly and completely.

And here you are repeating some of them, as though they had not been rejected and have some merit after all.

Well, they have no merit that's worth speaking of and should be cast into the dustbin of history.

And you might go back and recheck the outcome of the 2012 election in America.

Edit to add this article:

Chemicals pervasive in Chicago air

D5, a chemical compound found in a variety of beauty and skin care products, is reaching potentially alarming levels, say scientists.

By
Environmental Health News
Tue, Apr 30 2013 at 11:53 AM
http://www.mnn.com/health/healthy-space ... hicago-air

On the brink of federal regulatory review, chemicals in deodorants, lotions and conditioners are showing up in Chicago’s air at levels that scientists call alarming.

The airborne compounds – cyclic siloxanes – are traveling to places as far as the Arctic, and can be toxic to aquatic life.

“These chemicals are just everywhere,” said Keri Hornbuckle, an engineering professor at the University of Iowa and senior author of a new study.

Concentrations were 10 times higher in Chicago’s air than in the air of West Branch, Iowa, and four times higher than in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Hornbuckle said the findings are worrisome because the compounds are ubiquitous and have been detected at much higher levels than other common environmental contaminants. “These are big concentrations and, truthfully, are concerning to me,” she said.

But whether there are any risks from breathing the chemicals is unknown. There have been no studies to measure people’s exposures or investigate potential health risks.

Continues ...

And there's the point: The GOP wants to disband the EPA, the only national agency we have that looks afer the health of our environemt and works hard to keep our air and water clean enough for our use and not make us sick in the process.

And that in a context of an overwhelming use of chemicals like D5 in consumer products, a chemical that's not been tested to determine what exposure people can handle without suffering undue affects on their health.

So we have consumer products and chemical industries using copious amounts of untested chemicals and subjecting Americans and all people of the planet to their unbridled and uncaring and utterly irresponsible chemical experiment, which is being conducted on us all ... for a buck.

If anyone here thinks a society can conduct itself in this way and get away with it, I suggest they think again. This is like begging for a health crisis and should it occur guess who picks up the tab for addressing it? Yes, taxpayers, which means YOU.

Republicans and in particular the Tea Bagger and libertarian zealots they harbor in their ranks think we can just let industry throw 5,00o new checmicals out there every year and not a smidgen of harm will come to anything. One could look forever and not find a more stupefyingly ignorant headset than this. These people are living in the past, before 1900; they revel in the notion of generating a rebirth of the Gilded Age.

And you think such persons have the capacity to proffer "right ideas" or to suggest changes or reforms or whatever that make a hill of beans worth of sense?

I want to hear your defense of this despicable ideology and its attending attitude and monstrously dumbassed ideas.

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

UtilityMonster wrote:On economic issues, I am curious what right wing parties are right about. I'm pressed for time so I won't write out holistic defenses of these policies, but will instead take up defenses for whichever ones you disagree with. Here are a few:

1. The Right has historically been the ideology defensive of free trade. They are absolutely correct that free trade is good for all parties involved.
2. The Right in the U.S. has been openly commenting on the need to cut entitlement programs. They are correct that, in order to be fiscally solvent in future, we will have to cut entitlement programs. However they are wrong that:
a. Those programs need to or should be cut now.
b. About what programs need to be cut and how to cut them.
c. That this should be done without any revenue increases.
3. The Right has typically been more cognizant of the existence of market efficiencies and the good that markets can do.
a. Admittedly, they see market efficiencies were none exist far too often.
4. In the US, they correctly support charter schools and attempts at decentralizing education, reducing the power/influence of teachers' unions, and creating competition between schools to improve children's educational outcomes.

I am sure I could think of more, but I've started actually having difficulty thinking of more at this point, so I'll stop here.

While I only listed a few issues (let me know if you agree/disagree, whether you think there are other issues they are right about) with a number of caveats, I do think these are important issues, principally.

(1) The American electorate rejected Republican mantras in the 2012 election, utterly and completely.

(2) And here you are repeating some of them, as though they had not been rejected and have some merit after all.

(3) Well, they have no merit that's worth speaking of and should be cast into the dustbin of history.

(4) And you might go back and recheck the outcome of the 2012 election in America.

(1), (2) and (4) are irrelevant. The correctness or worthiness of an idea doesn't change with the whims of the electorate.

(3) is what this thread is discussing. Things like free trade haven't been shown to have "no merit". At best, we could say "it's a little complicated". Deregulation, as I've shown you repeatedly in the past, is often useful at making goods more available to a broader section of the public, is often useful at increasing competition.

EDIT: Regarding "And there's the point: The GOP wants to disband the EPA" and everything after: This thread isn't about how the right is right about everything, and this thread isn't about what they're wrong about. It's in the title: What the Right is right about.

Strontium Dog wrote:

Macdoc wrote:I really detest the term free trade as there is no such thing as a free market either - the latter is an oxymoron.

It's not helped by the fact that there seems to be several competing definitions of "free market".

Case in point:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:A regulated market is by definition not a "free market," is it?

Loren Michael wrote:

Strontium Dog wrote:

Macdoc wrote:I really detest the term free trade as there is no such thing as a free market either - the latter is an oxymoron.

It's not helped by the fact that there seems to be several competing definitions of "free market".

Case in point:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:A regulated market is by definition not a "free market," is it?

I guess you didn't notice the question mark, eh?

Pay closer attention. Maybe even answer my question.

Loren Michael wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

UtilityMonster wrote:On economic issues, I am curious what right wing parties are right about. I'm pressed for time so I won't write out holistic defenses of these policies, but will instead take up defenses for whichever ones you disagree with. Here are a few:

1. The Right has historically been the ideology defensive of free trade. They are absolutely correct that free trade is good for all parties involved.
2. The Right in the U.S. has been openly commenting on the need to cut entitlement programs. They are correct that, in order to be fiscally solvent in future, we will have to cut entitlement programs. However they are wrong that:
a. Those programs need to or should be cut now.
b. About what programs need to be cut and how to cut them.
c. That this should be done without any revenue increases.
3. The Right has typically been more cognizant of the existence of market efficiencies and the good that markets can do.
a. Admittedly, they see market efficiencies were none exist far too often.
4. In the US, they correctly support charter schools and attempts at decentralizing education, reducing the power/influence of teachers' unions, and creating competition between schools to improve children's educational outcomes.

I am sure I could think of more, but I've started actually having difficulty thinking of more at this point, so I'll stop here.

While I only listed a few issues (let me know if you agree/disagree, whether you think there are other issues they are right about) with a number of caveats, I do think these are important issues, principally.

(1) The American electorate rejected Republican mantras in the 2012 election, utterly and completely.

(2) And here you are repeating some of them, as though they had not been rejected and have some merit after all.

(3) Well, they have no merit that's worth speaking of and should be cast into the dustbin of history.

(4) And you might go back and recheck the outcome of the 2012 election in America.

(1), (2) and (4) are irrelevant. The correctness or worthiness of an idea doesn't change with the whims of the electorate.

(3) is what this thread is discussing. Things like free trade haven't been shown to have "no merit". At best, we could say "it's a little complicated". Deregulation, as I've shown you repeatedly in the past, is often useful at making goods more available to a broader section of the public, is often useful at increasing competition.

EDIT: Regarding "And there's the point: The GOP wants to disband the EPA" and everything after: This thread isn't about how the right is right about everything, and this thread isn't about what they're wrong about. It's in the title: What the Right is right about.

You missed the good part, to wit, "And you think such persons have the capacity to proffer "right ideas" or to suggest changes or reforms or whatever that make a hill of beans worth of sense?

Please show us a Republican proposal to deregulate something with the goals in mind that you cite.

Besides, who asked you? My post was directed at UtilityMonster, not you. Move out of the way and let him speak to it.