Minimum wage

[Cantplay]

If our m8nimum wage is fair, unemployment should pay no more than that.

Otherwise there is no incentive to take a min wage job.

John

[Reeltarded]

That is brilliant. I shall pass that along to my congressman.

[Leo_Gnardo]

plus handling the product to trim it leaves that sticky tar-what-ever-it-is all over their hands

That's hash, JGG. Fresh off the farm. A 1mm ball of it would be enough to get ya crosseyed.

When they get to the check out, they use their EBT card (the new food stamps) for all the food, then they pull big wads of 100-dollar bills out of their pockets to pay for their cigs and booze...

Same exact story in some communities near here. Only diff is, the guy with the EBT and wad of Franklins is wearing a funny little hat. White as a snowman, too. Not a farmer of any sort. Plenty of other "types." For contrast, scroungy biker types with swastikas on their shirts. It really is a puzzlement. Still don't amount to much compared to corporate... I keep sayin'. In that case, it's the pols and their executive pals, out on the golf course. The deal is made, and nobody sees it, because it's done with electronic blips between computers.

Cantplay, I like your idea. There was a "work for welfare" program but seems to have fizzled out fast. Imagine that.

[Cantplay]

WPA was the last instance of it that I remember.

John

[LeeMo]

I received the following in a recent e-mail. It hits pretty close to the subject at hand.
............


"IF YOU CAN'T FIX IT WITH A
HAMMER,YOU'VE GOT AN
ELECTRICAL PROBLEM"

WRITTEN BY A 21 YEAR OLD FEMALE - Wow, this girl has a great plan!

Love the last thing she would do the best.

This was written by a 21 yr old female who gets it. It's her future she's worried

about and this is how she feels about the social welfare big government state

that she's being forced to live in! These solutions are just common sense in

her opinion.
This was in the Waco Tribune Herald, Waco , TX

PUT ME IN CHARGE . . .

Put me in charge



of food stamps. I'd get rid of Lone Star
cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho's, just money for
50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and
all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want
steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge



of Medicaid. The first thing I'd do is to get
women Norplant birth control implants or tubal
legations. Then, we'll test recipients for drugs,
alcohol, and nicotine. If you want to reproduce or use
drugs, alcohol, or smoke, then get a job.

Put me in charge



of government housing. Ever live in a military
barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and
good state of repair. Your home" will be subject to
inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried.
If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and
your own place.

In addition, you will either
present a check stub from a job each week or you will
report to a "government" job. It may be cleaning the
roadways of trash, painting and repairing public
housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22
inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo
and speakers and put that money toward the "common
good.."

Before you write that I've violated
someone's rights, realize that all of the above is
voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules.
Before you say that this would be "demeaning" and ruin
their "self esteem," consider that it wasn't that long
ago that taking someone else's money for doing
absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self
esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other
people's mistakes we should at least attempt to make
them learn from their bad choices. The current system
rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.


AND
While you are on Gov't subsistence, you no longer can
VOTE! Yes, that is correct. For you to vote would be a
conflict of interest. You will voluntarily remove
yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov't
welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.

..........

I hope that I haven't offended anyone.
LeeMo

[Leo_Gnardo]

WPA was the last instance of it that I remember.

John

WPA did excellent work, a lot of it still around. Post offices, park facilities, highways, more. Can't imagine what a 21st century WPA would be like. All mod cons and politically correct. Tough to get work out of guys who are constantly playing with their plastic pocket pals. Back then it was "work for your supper or you don't get any."

[LeftyStrat]

Well, there was a time when we didn't have minimum wage, or 40 hour/5 day work weeks. We had women working in sweat shops that had the doors to the fire escapes locked. Then the government had to poke it's nose into our business and make us provide a safe working environment.

Perhaps if we had no minimum wage we could make cotton plantations profitable again.

We should also drop educational grants and student loans. Those just drive up the tuition rates, since there is more demand.

And let's face it, public education just turns people into uppity workers who think they have right to safe working conditions or a decent wage.

I mean if these workers don't like the work I give them, they can just pay off what they owe at the company store and move to another town to find work.

[cbass]

In theory I agree there should be no Min. Wage.A free market should be self regulating.

In practise It don't work.If you leave it up to the upper class to set wages for lower class we will be working for bowls of rice.
You really think 7.25 an hour is to much?

There's know denying that our social services is a screwed up mess.and ther is a lot of people taking advntage of it.
How ever I've known a few single moms that have taken advantage of welfare to get through school and get a good job.
I think the real problem is there is no incentive to work.The messed up thing is if you have worked your whole life and end up in a bad situation.There is no help for you.We're spending all on sociatal leeches.

The 21 year old girl that wrote that peice sounds like a perxon that knows she will never have to ask for help to feed her kids.

[Teleguy61]

The 21 year old girl that wrote that peice sounds like a perxon that knows she will never have to ask for help to feed her kids.

Bingo. Nothing like the arrogance of never having felt poverty, hunger, or want.

[gktamps]

Arguments against the minimum wage are a red herring in my view. Why? Because there are many, many occupations that require job training but no education that pay ever-escalating wages.

In San Francisco, BART workers are striking, yet they earn an average salary of $76,555 a year. http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_237 ... -best-paid
My friend retired from driving cable cars with a pension of over $100k yearly.

Throwing out some numbers, if unskilled workers earn about $1,200 a month, $14,400 a year at a bit above minimum wage, semi-skilled workers about $2,000 a month, $24,000 a year, it's a big gap between the lowest earners and those in the next brackets.

I agree with those who strongly feel that people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but the ideal doesn't fit with reality. Not everyone is smart, educated (not always the same thing), has the same economic advantages, or lives where they can move steadily up the income ladder. Lefty, cbass and Teleguy identified the problem; businesses will pay as little as they possibly can, but not everyone can just change jobs if all similar work pays squat. Not everyone can choose between a Ford or Toyota, they have to find a $500 used POS to drive until it breaks down.

I agree with those who see the bottom line of businesses being affected by higher labor costs, but minimum wages tend to affect mostly those businesses that sell hamburgers for a buck, and Chinese made garbage for cheaper than it costs to make in the West. Around 70% of US GDP is fueled by consumer spending (www.money-zine.com), so yes, if stuff costs more, GDP is affected, but what is the real cost for the crap we buy these days?

If the problem was simple, the solution would be easy, but that isn't the case. There is no such thing as a pure market anymore - it's too manipulated, too global. Yes, imposing an artificially high floor for earners who have few skills has negative side effects, but why are we focusing on the lowest earners when those a few rungs up are pulling in so much more, and striking to earn more?

My 2 cents, but I earn enough to say more, if need be.

Greg

P.S. Here's an interesting database of public salaries.
http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area?Entity=Bay Area Rapid Transit&appSession=91719338008749&RecordID=&PageID=2&PrevPageID=2&cpipage=1&CPISortType=&CPIorderBy=

[NickC]

The government rarely solves problems. For every problem they DO solve, they create many more that are worse than the one they solved.

Laissez-faire markets are not perfection/Utopia, nor should we expect them to be. But free markets (unfettered by regulation and/or multi-national conglomerates) solve more problems than they create, and mitigate (rather than make worse) the inherent problems of humanity. Human beings are the arbiters of all economic systems, every system variant thereof composed of masses of human beings interacting in complex systems.

Freedom, under the worst of circumstances, is still better than fascism and tyranny under the best of cases. That which governs least, governs best. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[Reeltarded]

In theory I agree there should be no Min. Wage.A free market should be self regulating.

In practise It don't work.If you leave it up to the upper class to set wages for lower class we will be working for bowls of rice.
You really think 7.25 an hour is to much?

There's know denying that our social services is a screwed up mess.and ther is a lot of people taking advntage of it.
How ever I've known a few single moms that have taken advantage of welfare to get through school and get a good job.
I think the real problem is there is no incentive to work.The messed up thing is if you have worked your whole life and end up in a bad situation.There is no help for you.We're spending all on sociatal leeches.

The 21 year old girl that wrote that peice sounds like a perxon that knows she will never have to ask for help to feed her kids.

Your second line fights itself. Break away from the line. I listened to them and it didn't make sense so I discovered the truth and now I am as dangerous as I can be.the free market won't be rich people setting wages it will be unpaid jobs going undone. Throw in the mix of illegal workers and I found the cheap jobs USers won't do.

You know.

[LeftyStrat]

The problem is large corporations don't want a free market. As a CEO of a large corporation, my job is to "maximize shareholder value," preferably in the short term and in a dramatic way so I can use it as a stepping stone to my next big gig (see Carly Fiorina).

For example, PC vendors who want to sell Windows on their hardware must sign a nondisclosure agreement on pricing, and pay the Windows fee for every PC they ship, whether it has Windows on it or not. The pretty much kills all OS competition for generic hardware.

Employees are the major cost center for most organizations, and from a bean counters perspective just an albatross. There are organizations that value their employees, for example, the Costco CEO has stated that experienced employees increase the value of his company, so he's willing to pay more than his competitors to keep them.

But for every knight, there are ten scoundrels. And in some cases, the scoundrels are the children of the knight, see Walmart.

[cbass]

In theory I agree there should be no Min. Wage.A free market should be self regulating.

In practise It don't work.If you leave it up to the upper class to set wages for lower class we will be working for bowls of rice.
You really think 7.25 an hour is to much?

There's know denying that our social services is a screwed up mess.and ther is a lot of people taking advntage of it.
How ever I've known a few single moms that have taken advantage of welfare to get through school and get a good job.
I think the real problem is there is no incentive to work.The messed up thing is if you have worked your whole life and end up in a bad situation.There is no help for you.We're spending all on sociatal leeches.

The 21 year old girl that wrote that peice sounds like a perxon that knows she will never have to ask for help to feed her kids.

Your second line fights itself. Break away from the line. I listened to them and it didn't make sense so I discovered the truth and now I am as dangerous as I can be.the free market won't be rich people setting wages it will be unpaid jobs going undone. Throw in the mix of illegal workers and I found the cheap jobs USers won't do.

You know.

I'm not sure what what I'm talking about but we already have a mix of illegal workers.It's really fucked up my world.It's not about americans not being willing to work.It's about people that can afford to not willing to pay a good wage.

Trust me If a business man can get away with payig you 5 bucks a day they will in a sec.Kinda like whats going on with illegals.

Most of the smart people I know that do construction got the hell out and got a real job.Young people are not going into it cause its a dead end Being takin over by Illegalls lucky if they are making minimum wage.

Guess In the end it really don't matter I'll still be poor either way


There is a factory here that sent a bunch of its wirk to Mexico.They ended up moving it all back here because the quality was to low and were having to many returns.I wish they would do that with the construction industry here.

Thats enough incoherent rambiling for now.

[Reeltarded]

If nobody shows up for those jobs the pay would go up. When you see a job filled and you don't have a job you do imagine there must be someone more desperate than you. It's no wonder. It's easy. We won't just buy the crap, we'll consider providing the sale of the crap with terrible service.

When robots are cheaper than fry cooks, McDonald's drive thru will accept credit cards and cash with a machine that dispenses hamburgers microwaved to order and we won't be having this job discussion. It's time we talk about starting robot repair union. It's not ethical for the man to save money by having his human replacing robots serviced by an army of robotic repairmen, and what about the robots who will repair those robots?

Yes. Utopia isn't a dream. We made it. Perfect.