Raise the Minimum Wage

You're a very ignorant fool if you are arguing that "demand" has nothing to do with market price. Originally Posted by I B Hankering

Never argued that and wouldn't so I must not be an ignorant fool

Of course demand has something to do with market price, but not so much in a controlled market or a monopoly like cigs or dairy or almost any agricultural product these days. The problem with demand is that it is very hard to quantify except in very large markets and doesn't always coincide very well with production capability and can result in producers not being able to make a profit or making a ridiculously outsize profits. Most wine costs $3 to $5 to produce and the difference in prices is often down to marketing, hype and scarcity for instance.

In a wave of door-to-door police searches over the weekend, the Israeli government cemented anti-migrant sentiment into a mass deportation program by rounding up 80 refugees. The arrests come days after a Jerusalem court legalized transferring all of Israel’s 1,500 South-Sudanese migrants back to their home country.

The roundup is part of a larger policy to deport all of Israel’s asylum seekers, drafted by Interior Minister Eli Yishai who said earlier this month that Israel is for “the white man.” Speaking to Maariv on June 3, 2012 the minister said: “Muslims that arrive here do not even believe this country belongs to us, to the white man,” continuing that he is prepared to use “all the tools to expel the foreigners, until not one infiltrator remains.” The program was also endorsed by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu Originally Posted by Jewish Lawyer

This is especially ironic because Jews were originally Abrahamic, Semitic middle eastern people (essentially physically indistinguishable Muslims) from but once the diaspora was on, they mostly became European and "white" though not considered European by Christian Europeans. Then there were African Jews (I met the most incredibly stunning Ethiopian Jew a few years ago who had been rescued when she was 12 moving to Tel Aviv and having running water in her apartment for the first time, she then served in the Army and got a masters and was touring the U.S. - beautiful, smart and capable of killing you without much thinking about it), Persian Jews, Indian Jews and others. Only 2000 years later do those Europeans Jews come "home" to Israel and implement many of the views and policies they suffered under for millenia. Sad and ironic, but true. Man's inhumanity to man.

Thus Jews are some of the most diverse people on the face of the earth (I'm sure DNA studies would confirm this) yet in Israel many have this same "white man" racism disease that seems to afflict a significant portion of our population. This is an interesting Wikipedia article on that topic I just saw - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews Turns out that the line through the males goes back a long way, but those males actually often chose mates from local populations, even though Judaism supposedly descends through the maternal line, making the Jewish population very diverse genetically after 2000 or so years.

Actually, it probably would thanks to Congress blatantly interfering with the free market for decades. With the assistance of lobbyists of course.

Milk prices are only PARTIALLY due to market considerations.

http://www.cato.org/publications/com...an-milk-prices Originally Posted by chefnerd

My point exactly.

IMHO the "free market" or "free markets" are a myth like unicorns, elves and dragons.

Think about it. Economics is a human invention as is money. Neither exist without people or governments. For several thousand years the predominant form of government was monarchy or dictatorship. Monarchs and dictators have always controlled (and taxed heavily) most important aspects of their economies and money, especially food, gold, land, anything that can be used for weapons and anything else valuable like silver, gems, etc...

Economies and economics has existed for at least 5000 years, probably much more. One of the oldest known markets was the silk road, but it was far from free being taxed all throughout its length for protection and passage at a minimum. The first known "free" market other than barter economies was tulips in the Netherlands around 1600. It didn't take long for short selling to be banned (making it no longer a free market) and there was a huge bubble and crash a few years later. The point being that you can't have markets without money and people and you never get money and people without rules (which makes the markets not free of course). I am all for making many markets freer and think that will often make them work more efficiently, but only to a point. I used to think I was an anarchist when I was young (before libertarian came into vogue as a philosophical position) but then I grew up. So in my view the only question left is how free should markets be to work efficiently and well for the good of society and how we we define that phrase "good for society" so we can mostly agree on the goal? Sudan and Somalia are pretty darn free and libertarian, but I think few of us would choose to move there.

This is especially ironic because Jews were originally Abrahamic, Semitic middle eastern people (essentially physically indistinguishable Muslims) from but once the diaspora was on, they mostly became European and "white" though not considered European by Christian Europeans. Then there were African Jews (I met the most incredibly stunning Ethiopian Jew a few years ago who had been rescued when she was 12 moving to Tel Aviv and having running water in her apartment for the first time, she then served in the Army and got a masters and was touring the U.S. - beautiful, smart and capable of killing you without much thinking about it), Persian Jews, Indian Jews and others. Only 2000 years later do those Europeans Jews come "home" to Israel and implement many of the views and policies they suffered under for millenia. Sad and ironic, but true. Man's inhumanity to man.

Thus Jews are some of the most diverse people on the face of the earth (I'm sure DNA studies would confirm this) yet in Israel many have this same "white man" racism disease that seems to afflict a significant portion of our population. This is an interesting Wikipedia article on that topic I just saw - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews Turns out that the line through the males goes back a long way, but those males actually often chose mates from local populations, even though Judaism supposedly descends through the maternal line, making the Jewish population very diverse genetically after 2000 or so years. Originally Posted by austxjr

Folks who classify Jewish people as a racial group are plain ignorant. I've said this here since the beginning, though the same group tends to want to argue every time. My family was in Northeastern Europe for hundreds of years ... Near Scandinavia. I suppose that makes me ... What?

Only a few ethnocentric racists and JL want to pigeonhole Jews as one thing or another. We see them post here daily.

My family was in Northeastern Europe for hundreds of years ... Near Scandinavia. I suppose that makes me ... What? Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

My point exactly.

IMHO the "free market" or "free markets" are a myth like unicorns, elves and dragons.
Originally Posted by austxjr

I would argue they are a construction of man, man defined it, so it exists within those parameters. Unicorns, elves and dragons were intended to be myths.

Most wine costs $3 to $5 to produce and the difference in prices is often down to marketing, hype and scarcity for instance. Originally Posted by austxjr

. . . to foster and promote DEMAND!