Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Economic Issues

Unit 1 Microeconomic Issues

YES: Milton Friedman, from “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” The New York Times Magazine (September 13, 1970)

NO: Robert Almeder, from “Morality in the Marketplace: Reflections on the Friedman Doctrine,” in Milton Snoeyenbos, Robert Almeder, and James Huber, eds., Business Ethics, rev. ed. (Prometheus Press, 1998)

Free-market economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman contends that the sole responsibility of business is to increase its profits. Philosopher Robert Almeder maintains that if capitalism is to survive, it must act in socially responsible ways that go beyond profit making.

YES: Ira T. Kay, from “Don’t Mess with CEO Pay,” Across the Board (January /February 2006)

NO: Edgar Woolard, Jr., from “CEOs Are Being Paid Too Much,” Across the Board (January /February 2006)

Ira T. Kay, businessman and author, defends current CEO pay practices. He argues that “Empirical studies show that executive compensation has closely tracked corporate performance,” and that rejecting pay-for-performance will hurt both workers and stockholders. Edgar Woolard, Jr., former CEO and chairman of Dupont, describes four myths regarding the compensation received by corporate business leaders. Dismissing the myths, he believes no one but CEOs get “paid excessively when they?fail.”

YES: Edwin G. Foulke, Jr., from Statement to the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections of the House Committee on Education and Labor (June 24, 2008)

NO: Mark H. Ayers, from Testimony before the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections of the House Committee on Education and Labor (June 24, 2008)

Assistant Secretary of Labor and OSHA head Foulke states that his agency is committed to protecting employees, that it has a multi-faceted approach to reducing construction-related accidents, and that it has a strong, targeted enforcement program. Union official Mark Ayers believes that OSHA is failing to improve the safety and health of construction workers, and he calls for several changes, including an increase in OSHA enforcement activities.

YES: Mark McClellan, from “Generic Drugs and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit,” Testimony to the Senate Special Committee on Aging (September 21, 2006)

NO: Jagadeesh Gokhale, from “An Evaluation of Medicare’s Prescription Drug Policy,” Testimony to the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security (September 20, 2005)

Health care administrator Mark McClellan believes that the Part D drug benefit is the most important new addition to Medicare in its history, providing millions of Americans with better benefits “at a significantly lower cost than originally estimated.” Cato Institute senior fellow Jagadeesh Gokhale believes that Medicare’s Part D drug benefit is “bad and shortsighted economic policy.” He believes this program will, among other things, increase private drug prices, impose higher fiscal burdens on future generations, and reduce national saving and investment.

YES: American Benefits Council, from “Statement before the Subcommittee on Health of the House Committee on Ways and Means” (May 14, 2008)

NO: Linda J. Blumberg, from “Testimony before the Subcommittee on Health of the House Committee on Ways and Means” (May 14, 2008)

The American Benefits Council, a national trade association, believes that “HSAs are working as intended” for the vast majority of the 6.1 million Americans covered by “HAS-eligible plans.” Linda J. Blumberg, Urban Institute research associate, identifies a number of problems associated with medical care and argues that “HSAs are not the solutions to these pressing national concerns.”

YES: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, from “Confronting the New Health Care Crisis: Improving Health Care Quality and Lowering Costs by Fixing Our Medical Liability System” (July 24, 2002)

NO: Jackson Williams, from “Bush’s Medical Malpractice Disinformation Campaign: A Rebuttal to the HHS Report on Medical Liability,” A Report of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch (January 2003)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) argues that although the United States has a health care system that “is the envy of the world,” it is a system that is to be brought to its knees by aggressive attorneys who force the medical community to practice costly “defensive medicine.” Jackson Williams, legal counsel for the watchdog group Public Citizen, charges that the position taken by HHS is factually “incorrect, incomplete, or misleading” and even contradicted by other governmental agencies.

Unit 2 Macroeconomic Issues

YES: Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, from “Wal-Mart Supercenters: What’s in Store for Southern California?” www.laedc.org/consulting/projects/2004_WalMart-Study.pdf (January 2004)

NO: Democratic Staff of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, from “Everday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart,” www.mindfully.org/Industry/2004/Wal-Mart-Labor-Record16feb04.htm (February 16, 2004)

The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation believes that the introduction of Wal-Mart supercenter stores into the Southern California market will generate significant savings for consumers on their grocery, apparel, and general merchandise spending, and the redirected spending from the savings will create over 35,000 new jobs. The Democratic Staff of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce believes that Wal-Mart, in its efforts to achieve and maintain low prices, has “come to represent the lowest common denominator in the treatment of working people.”

YES: The White House, from “Strengthening Social Security for the 21st Century,” http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/socialsecurity/200501/strengtheningsocialsecurity.html (February 2005)

NO: Dean Baker, from “Bush’s Numbers Racket: Why Social Security Privatization Is a Phony Solution to a Phony Problem,” The American Prospect Online Edition (February 1, 2005)

The White House identifies a number of problems with the present structure of the Social Security system and proposes personal retirement accounts as a way of resolving these problems, and “dramatically reduce the costs of permanently fixing the system.” Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, argues that President Bush’s plan for personal retirement accounts would not fix Social Security; instead, it would “undermine a system that has provided security for tens of millions of workers, and their families, for seven decades, and which can continue to do so for long into the future if it is just left alone.”

YES: Rebecca Blank, from “Testimony before the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support of the House Committee on Ways and Means” (April 10, 2008)

NO: Alex Brill, from “Testimony before the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support of the House Committee on Ways and Means” (April 10, 2008)

University of Michigan Professor Rebecca Blank supports an extension of unemployment, arguing that the time to extend the time period for unemployment benefits is in the early stages of an economic sl...