From an economist’s perspective, the demands are both fascinating and disheartening. Fascinating because people who haven’t studied economics believe some really strange things; disheartening because many of the policies would hurt the very people they’re meant to help. Intentions are not results.
Let’s take a quick look at each of the demands. I have left his grammatical errors intact:
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
He’s being far too moderate here. Take as true that importing goods across international borders kills jobs. Well, as a matter of logic, importing goods across state borders is no different. Oregonians should be forbidden from importing goods from Californians. Inter-city free trade has the same harmful effects. Consistency demands banning that, too. Even inter-household trade kills jobs under this line of thought.
If the protesters arbitrarily draw the line at the national level, then there is an inconsistency in their thought. And economists from the left and the right have been openly poking fun at that inconsistency for over 200 years.
And why only a $20 minimum wage? Think big. If Congress can raise living standards simply by mandating higher wages, why not $200 per hour? Why not $2,000 per hour?
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Because monopolies work so well.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
This isn’t worded clearly. Does this mean a $20 minimum wage for all workers, as in Demand One? Or does it mean giving unemployment benefits equivalent to a living wage, however defined? If it’s the second case, it’s pretty easy to see that fewer people would choose to work if this demand was met. As any economist will tell you, incentives matter.
Demand four: Free college education.
This should be re-worded as “Demand Four: The poor and uneducated must give money to the rich and educated.” This just sounds like the protesters, many of them students, don’t want to pay their tuition and their student loans (see also Demand Eleven).
This demand is fundamentally regressive. Wealth redistribution from rich to poor is one thing. But asking the poor to subsidize the rich strikes this writer as morally wrong.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
This day will come. I look forward to it. Progress is a beautiful thing to behold. But these kinds of transitions can only happen from the bottom up. He is demanding that it be top-down, which is the same thing as demanding that it never happen at all. Top-down is how Solyndra happened. Top-down is how ethanol happened.
Top-down is also an open invitation to the exact kind of cronyism that the Occupy Wall Street crowd – and this writer – despise. Again, think results, not intentions. The best way to achieve this policy goal is to make entrepreneurship and innovation easier. It’s a bottom-up world. Policies must acknowledge that if they are to succeed.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
He must be unfamiliar with the data. Government infrastructure spending is about 2.5 percent of GDP right now. That’s the highest it’s been since the 1950s, when the interstate highway system was being built. And today’s 2.5 percent is sliced from a pie that’s nearly 7 times larger in real terms. That puts current spending on par with about 17 percent of 1950 GDP. That is hardly austere.
All the protesters would have to do to get most of what they want is to move to a communist run or dictatorship country. Everyone except those in charge are equal.
Make sure to read the responses to the original article too.