ArturSoler

Rationality in an economic sense does not mean "logical". What it means is "purposeful".

A reasonable existence is a completely subjective value. Someone with a $5/hour wage today would live better than some kings some centuries ago. So it does not exist that "minimum amount of money".

Society takes a loss. The less wealth is produced, the poorer the society is. It's as easy as that.

What denies opportunities is denying someone the possibility of working because he's not productive enough.

It is not a net benefit. It is a net loss for society, as less wealth is produced, so society in general gets poorer. It is also a net loss for those that become unintentionally unemployed. The overall salary mass is not raised, but reduced.

I would also add it is completely illegitimate to prohibit a voluntary agreement based on some supposed "greater good".

Your assertion that no minimum wage means "shitty wages for everybody" is unfounded. Wages are determined by productivity, and it's no possible to raise real wages (taking into account other goods prices) with a law. Only an increase in produced wealth can raise wages.

Edit to add: If you imply that the "unintentionally unemployed" ones are a unlucky few, that's not the case. As you would probably know, official unemployment levels are around 20% in some EU countries, while real levels are probably way above that. That means a whole lot of people is not allowed to produce nothing because of minimum wage laws. The wealth prevented from being created is huge.

Setting a minimum wage makes some people's wages rise to it - AND, unavoidably, it also makes some people unemployed.

Because not all employers extract the same value from the same workforce, those more efficient will be able to afford the raise. But, by definition, the employers of some of that population will not be able to afford that raise (otherwise the market value would have been greater). This means some people will become unintentionally unemployed.

Native Americans sold Manhattan for $24 in 1626. It may seem a low amount, but invested at an annual 6% that would be over $125 billion today.

The CPI index is highly "massaged" (looking for a lower than actual value). A better inflation measure would probably be compare commodity prices then and now (copper, silver, gold, oil, etc).

Of course that is compensated partly with productivity increases.

That's an idea I haven't thought about.

My opinion is that the index page goal, when not logged in, is to maximize sign ups.

I'll think about it and probably do a test.

Thanks!

2MinsADay is the side project I've been working on for some time. There's still a lot of work to do, but I've decided to stop waiting for it to be more complete, as it was already some kind of mental evasion.

The concept of the site is to help its members learn something new each day, a single simple concept of their interest, readable in less than 2 minutes at an average speed. Past ratings will be used to guess an item of interest for each user each day, and mail it to him or her.

Members are encouraged to submit their articles too.

I would really like to hear your criticisms and answer any question you could have.

Thanks for your attention.

That would make everyone poorer in the long term.

Good to find something that government is effective at.

In a libertarian society, BP would just need to compensate the owners of the properties directly affected (ocean and shoreline).

Fishing business would then not pay those owners to operate in their property and lose an opportunity, but they are not owed anything, since those owners have no obligation of letting the fishing business operate in their property.

Risks should not be ignored. Doing so promotes risky behaviour and misallocation of resources.

If a supplier of a company agrees on limiting liability on the corporation, as they do now by obligation, that's ok. But if you commit an agression, as this oil spill is, there should not be any limit on the liability.

Which would be good since it would already be installed.

Oh, man, I wondered before watching it if it was worth the 1 hour 16 minutes it's long.

Now I've watched it and I know it would have been worth even if it lasted 100 hours.

Thank you very much for letting me know about it.

This is what I call "survivor bias"

I second "Economics in One Lesson" recommendation. Economics explained in an understandable way for non-economists.

Another geocacher here :D

I recommend it to everybody too! www.geocaching.com

Isn't GWT used to build their wave client?

If she does not find a job, maybe it's her fault, not the college's.

She was not forced to go to that college, and she should had done some research about the institution before enrolling, if it happens to be so bad as she claims (that should be confirmed looking at other students).

I guess this student is not going to travel to North Korea again, at least with this name.