Edwards Preaches Socialism.

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071026/FRONTPAGE/710260384

Why limit the Minimum Wage to $9.50/hour? Why not $20/hour? The end result will be the same: Inflation will deflate the value of the increased pay. The costs for everything Minimum Wage workers produce will increase. Plus the pay for everyone else will increase, too. So there will be no benefit to the Minimum Wage worker.

On the otherhand, the increased pay will push Minimum Wage workers into paying income taxes and disqualify them for welfare benefits.

Plus Plus increased pay without increased productivity will chase more jobs offshore and increase automation. You can bet Indians and Chinese workers wont be getting increased pay.

 

[Lone_Quixote]

. . . On the otherhand, the increased pay will push Minimum Wage workers into paying income taxes and disqualify them for welfare benefits. . .

Yes, citizens who work for minimum wages are far happier having to stand in line and submit to the vagaries of compassionate bureaucrats grudgingly handing out government subsidies to underpaid workers, rather than forcing employees to share some of their profits by paying a living wage.

And every job which can possibly be automated or outsourced to increase investor’s quarterly earnings and the size of the CEO’s golden parachute will be done whatever is being paid to the workers.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

LONESOMEPOLECAT

Employers dont pay taxes, everything is passed to the customer.

What do you suppose rent and groceries and utilities, etc. will do when all the bottom feeders get a raise? Increase is the correct answer. So there is NO positive improvement for Minimum Wage Earners because everything will cost a lot more. Thats what inflation does. It destroys the value of money.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

James,

Are you sure you're not Paul Harvey in disguise?

 

[Pure]

Edwards Preaches Socialism.

it's comin', guy. it started with FDR and old age pensions. now it's medicare and medicaid, endorsed by the republican party.

would you prefer a ticket to argentina, or dubai?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

JJ

I'll bet you a box of your favorite donuts that I'm more liberal than you are.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

PURE

People believe there are free lunches. What they ignore is there are no poor politicans. Every last one of them are the 'rich' they harpoon. Rich people do not go to Washington so they can fuck themselves with higher taxes.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

JJ

Paul Harvey is an imbecile. I'm surprised you listen to him; I'll bet you read Ann Coulter.

 

[Pure]

note to jb.

People believe there are free lunches.

So James, you think that people who are looking forward to old age pensions are generally unaware that they have paid into pension funds for years, to get this result?

Any evidence of this?

---
Incidentally, I am not a liberal, i am a social democrat.

 

[gauchecritic]

Inflation rather tends to inflate value rather than deflate it. They are opposites.

How about this for an idea instead: those that sit on their arses all day get paid the same minimum wage as those that push brooms.

Those that have masters degrees in 'business studies' get paid the same minimum wage as the toilet cleaners.

Those that have the greater emotional stress of responsibility get to partake of the same underpaid stress of the machinist.

But what would be their incentive to work? The fact that they're actually working?

Those that can; will. Those that can't; push brooms.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

PURE

I belonged to an AFL-CIO labor union for several years. So did some of my uncles and cousins. One of my uncles retired a few years ago. He was in the union for about 40 years. The pension fund was embezzled by the International officers. My uncle got NOTHING. My vested portion is likewise gone.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

GAUCHE

Thats nonsense. A $5 hamburger is not worth more than a $2.50 burger if theyre identical. Increases in pay without increases in productivity or quality of work creates higher prices but no increase in quality or value.

 

[sr71plt]

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071026/FRONTPAGE/710260384

Why limit the Minimum Wage to $9.50/hour? Why not $20/hour? The end result will be the same: Inflation will deflate the value of the increased pay. The costs for everything Minimum Wage workers produce will increase. Plus the pay for everyone else will increase, too. So there will be no benefit to the Minimum Wage worker.

On the otherhand, the increased pay will push Minimum Wage workers into paying income taxes and disqualify them for welfare benefits.

Plus Plus increased pay without increased productivity will chase more jobs offshore and increase automation. You can bet Indians and Chinese workers wont be getting increased pay.

I agree. Obviously what we need to do instead is minimize the take on the other end of the scale. Tax the pants off of executives who are taking those ridiculously high bonuses to screw their companies (and the companies' employees) over.

I knew I liked Edwards.

 

[Pure]

note to JB

JB PURE

I belonged to an AFL-CIO labor union for several years. So did some of my uncles and cousins. One of my uncles retired a few years ago. He was in the union for about 40 years. The pension fund was embezzled by the International officers. My uncle got NOTHING. My vested portion is likewise gone.

and this proves what?

leave it to companies--if they wish to-- to set up pension funds?

things were better before FDR's "socialist" reforms?

 

[gauchecritic]

GAUCHE

Thats nonsense. A $5 hamburger is not worth more than a $2.50 burger if theyre identical. Increases in pay without increases in productivity or quality of work creates higher prices but no increase in quality or value.

Basic (simple) economics. Inflation: Too much money chasing too few goods.

Economically the burger itself has no intrinsic value.

The money paid for a burger is representative of labour. An hours work @ $2.50 p/h is the barter worth of the burger.

When the burger rises in price it devalues the cost of labour. Same burger. Same hour of work. Inflated price.

It has very little to do with quality or value, it's about profit.

That's 'The Great Money Trick' and why capitalism alone cannot succeed.

 

[xssve]

Monetarist policy allows the Fed to control inflation by manipulating the labor market, preventing the labor market from responding to supply and demand the same way as any other market would, this is market distortion, and the resulting overflow of wealth is pocketed by managment and stockholders at the expense of the labor - this is consistent with supply side theory.

Raising minimum wage is simply adjusting it to where it would have been if the labor market had not been being systematically distorted for the last 25 years, go look at the figures if you don't believe me. The resulting imbalance causes numerous social ills which somebody has to pay for.

The current fix the Fed is in w/respect to interest rates is a direct result of playing games all these years, bailing investors out everytime they get greedy and shit the bed which has only prompted them to form an unrealistic picture of how the investment market works, bigger and bigger bubbles.

i.e., they can't cut interest rates because the market is still so shaky from the pub-prime debacle, faith in our markets is at an all time low, which will probobly just spur a global move to a petro-euro, whereupon the shit will really hit the fan.

Manipulating the money supply isn't a magic wand, it can't create value where it doesn't exist, it's a paper chase.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

PURE

To my way of thinking it makes little difference who steals my pension...Congress, AFL-CIO, or GM.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

XSSVE

The price of hamburgers and dildos and Cokes will rise, regardless of what the Fed does. If labor costs more, business passes the cost on to the consumer. And DOLLAR GENERAL becomes TWO DOLLAR GENERAL.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

SR71PLT

What we need to do is get rid of politicians who make high salaries possible via carrying water for major corporations and special interests. But why stop with executives? Limit performers and athletes and brain surgeons, too.

 

[xssve]

We've discussed this before, athletes earn their money, whether they're overpaid or not is a matter of market dynamics, same goes for most owners of small Chapter S corportations, it isn't the top 1%, it's the top 1/2 of 1% that games the market to increase the value of their stock options and trades, derivitives and so forth, which includes outsourcing, raising prices and cutting services, etc. which put money in their pockets that typically comes out of yours, zero sum.

You're correct, without monetarist policy, we'd have more inflation, which would act as a market force to weed out unproductive firms: more of this liquidity that is supposed to be going towards capital improvements to increase efficiency and productivity in order to lower prices and offset inflation would be going towards capital improvements to increase efficiency and productivity to lower prices and offset inflation instead of being spent on public relations and lobbying to get special treatment from congress in order to lock in profits without having to invest in capital improvements to increase efficiency, etc.

 

[sr71plt]

SR71PLT

What we need to do is get rid of politicians who make high salaries possible via carrying water for major corporations and special interests. But why stop with executives? Limit performers and athletes and brain surgeons, too.

Fine with me (except I don't knee jerk on the politicians--they are much too convenient a scapegoat, I think--no more a problem then the ones voting for them). They could all take a cut and still be super rich--and except for the brain surgeons, there are a lot more equally talented people who would step into their shoes for less money. The American system is way out of whack on this.

 

[CorsetLvr]

Allow me to throw another factor in here. Shouldn't a worker's goal be to get beyond a minimum wage job. I worked a minimum wage job when it was $.75 hour when I was in school. That doesn't mean that I made a career out of it. I make a little more then that now. I don't see the problem as being what the minimum wage is, but rather that people are not progressing beyond that type of job. I don't think anyone ever intended the minimum wage to be a "living wage."

 

[Oblimo]

Employers dont pay taxes, everything is passed to the customer.

So customers, like, say, Walmart, are powerless against their suppliers? Or did you mean "consumers"?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

CORSETLVR

No one cares about Minimum Wage Earners, the real function of Minimum Pay is to increase the pay of union workers.

And 'yes' no one makes Minimum Wage for very long, if at all. And people dont make the effort to increase their employment value.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

OBLIMO

I mean what I write. Taxes get passed to the end user. Customer and consumer is a distinction without a difference. I know for a fact WAL-MART consumes some of what it buys but it gets to expense the purchase.