Based on those numbers, I believe the minimum wage would be over $20 p/hour.

That's a whole lot more money in the economy for people who want to buy things, or join porn sites, for example.

or how about we just let employers pay employees what their skills are worth? and then if someone wishes to earn more they just put a little effort in and acquire more skills?

but obviously that plan is no good, because it involves "effort"...:1orglaugh

I'm not arguing against raising the minimum wage. We have always paid more than that. And in many cases much more.

I do understand why McDonalds and Walmart do pay minimum. They want to balance profits for shareholders, hedges against rising commodity costs while keeping prices low.
As I've said, I really don't care either way if a big mac goes to $8. But I know a lot of employees here will care if Walmart raises the price of baby formula and diapers.

The stereotyping of the less fortunate, as lazy, is a perfectly idiotic mindset.

Fortunately for those very few at the very top (none of which are posting here on GFY) that propaganda, and divisive brainwashing, has proved very useful.

Divide and conquer.

That's all you do. "Democrats" are righteous, "Republicans" are evil. That's your unchanging and rigidly inflexible narrative. One can't get much more divisive in a national debate than that.

http://helian.net/blog/wp-content/up...pot-kettle.jpg

and here's a fine example of liberals understanding economics

.................................................. .................................................. .........................

You are dramatizing it. No one says that. It's said or implied that a percentage of the poor are lazy. I'll say that officially. A percentage of the poor are misguided. A tattoo is more important than a roof over their head. A bottle of cheap wine is more important than dinner.
Having a pistol is more important than taking a tech school course.

And a percentage of the poor are simply victims, that through nothing they did or could control put themselves into a bad situation. Those are the people who deserve some help. And they are getting it. It's that other group that doesn't take advantage of that help.

you do understand that Walmart as about a 4% net correct?

While I do agree with you.. I have to say that there are plenty of poor people that do have a small industry.. barter.. I know a hand full of people who survive on the barter system via craigslist.. they're able to take their traded/bartered merchandise turn around and sell it on craigslist and then pay their helpers...

The kind of person that is able to do this is a very driven poor person that is willing to take some god damn initiative unlike the other 99% of that population segment..

Jobs are hard to come by for some people here in the Pacific Northwest.. so doing things like that with barter is a good way to get by..

so is stereotyping the rich as worthless losers that got the money because they fucked the poor over :2 cents:

The op was right about one thing... i've had that avatar for close to 8 years.
Time for a new one.

:1orglaugh:thumbsup:thumbsup

And that is something I can respect. Rather than just bitching about what a bad deal they got and standing around with their handout waiting for someone else to take care of it.

It's always so damn easy to see who has and who has not employed low-wage workers. Until you do you don't have a clue.

Good ol GFY. Yesterday it was rag on the rich day. Today it's piss on the poor day. Got to love it. :thumbsup

All I know is when shit becomes valuable the poor will be born without arseholes.

True fact.



And in amongst the uber interesting debate I find this little gem...


Yup, got to love GFY. :D

How much equipment would you guess those employees *borrowed* from you over the years? If I had a dollar back for every tape measure and pair of gloves we've bought I could easily be enjoying a nice Italian addition to the stable.

Then there is the bigger stuff, space heaters, computer monitors, electric motors..a few weeks ago someone broke the glass in one of the employee entrance doors. Not a cheap repair.
Just before that I walked out into the shop and saw about a dozen *patches* from one of the forklifts. A pair of front tires for that was $700. And it never ends...

It's only a matter of time before Google develops a new algaerythm to feed the poor.

i luv woman

Not sure how deep his thinking is, but that can easily translate to... With out the poor or less fortunate there are no backs to climb over.. Or something along those lines.

If you make the minimum wage $20 per hour, then those unskilled workers are now competing with skilled workers for those jobs, and will become the permanently unemployed.... OR you will have a jump in prices and the people making minimum wage will be in the same hole again.

The trick is to gain skills and experience such that you become worth more than minimum wage.




By your logic, lets just make the minimum wage $100 per hour. Then everyone will be making $200k per year and we will all have plenty. There shouldn't be any problem with that.... right?



.:2 cents::pimp



(p.s. FYI, spending money does not drive an economy upward, it simply circulates things around. Wealth and value is created and increased by the creation of new products and services that people value, and increasing productivity of the production of existing products and services. Those people that increase the wealth of a society in a very large way mostly become wealthy themselves.)





.

I "climbed" over all kinds of backs in my life. What was I supposed to do stay where I was and wait for others to join me?

.

please send me a picture of your Testicles

life is like a big tree filled with monkeys climbing up and down.... the monkeys looking down see a bunch of smiling monkey faces... the monkeys looking up see a bunch of assholes :2 cents:

Well that makes more sense than most other posts, lol.

You know.. I'm no economics genius or anything. But it doesn't take a genius to know that this simply is NOT how money works. Your solution solves absolutely nothing.

Again.. Money is simply a measure of productivity. Nothing more.

One dollar = One unit of productivity. Without productivity, money means squat.

I wonder why so many people don't understand that. Doesn't anyone remember inflation?

AUstralia

Index Info
Consumer Price Index (Excl.Rent): 113.52
Rent Index: 58.65
Groceries Index: 110.62
Restaurants Index: 99.01
Consumer Price Plus Rent Index: 86.71
Local Purchasing Power: 108.78


US
Consumer Price Index (Excl.Rent): 76.76
Rent Index: 35.32
Groceries Index: 81.39
Restaurants Index: 67.83
Consumer Price Plus Rent Index: 56.51
Local Purchasing Power: 142.32

Uh oh, actual facts.

Basic economics put in a way that you perverts should understand..

If we all started with the same equal amount of porn pictures and videos, then they wouldn't be worth shit. It's the guy who goes out and does extra work to get different pictures and videos who's going to be able to trade them for goods and services.

Productivity = Earning

http://www.economist.com/content/big-mac-index

big mac same price both countries and in NYC the cost of living index are all 100 but they make min wage. and you pay for it.

This will amaze you but if the min wage goes to 20 dollars , all other wages go up. That's the bottom legal wage. Wages have been flat for 30 yrs. They almost doubled it during Truman and the country did well, imagine that.

what i don't get is what makes minimum wage workers worth less now than they were 20-30 years ago? wages across the board have not kept up with the cost of living. people like yourself just say, make more money but the more money people make the more things are going to cost and then they'll need to make even more money and then things will cost even more still...and round and round we go so how do we get off this circle jerk?

I actually think credit plays a fairly big role in this.

When I was a little kid (I'm 42 now) getting credit was not easy. My mom had to jump through a lot of hoops to buy the house we grew up in and she didn't make enough money to buy a new car, she always had to buy used cars. When the VCR came out they were $1,500 and the average person couldn't afford them so the average person didn't have them. The idea of financing something like a TV or a VCR or many things was just crazy.

Then things started to change. The lengths of mortgages increased. The lengths of car loans increased. Just about every major retailer out there started offering some kind of credit card or line or credit. Banks started offering lines of credit just for opening a checking account. Getting credit was easy.

With this came more purchasing power. The average person making the average wage could now afford a bigger house, a better car, a nice TV, a cool vacation etc. Of course it all came on credit and created debt. As companies started realizing that people would be willing to spend more if you gave them longer to pay they simply stopped making many of the lower priced and affordable things they did before. They stopped marketing things at their retail price, but instead at their monthly price.

As the years went on we found ourselves in a situation where people weren't demanding higher pay because they could still afford the things they wanted without getting raises.

Now workers can get all kinds of aid from the government to help subsidize their pay. So workers aren't worth less than they were 20-30 years ago, but a shift in policies, the emergence of various government programs and the easy ability to get credit has made it so that a person making very little has options and can still survive. Instead of demanding higher pay, they turn to other sources.

Just my 2 cents.

30 years ago you didn't have a Chinese work force of 500 million that are willing to work for next to nothing. You didn't have an enormous shipping container network that allows moving those products cheaply. It's a new world.

I don't think there is a way in the near future to improve any of it. A few people at the bottom will improve, but less than ever before. It appears to me that those that are destined to be at the bottom might just as well start getting used to it.

More Welfare for Wall Street: One in Three Bank Tellers Need Public Assistance

http://www.empireclaims.co.uk/blog/w...alker-says.jpg

Almost a third of the country?s half-million bank tellers rely on some form of public assistance to get by, according to a report due out Wednesday.

Researchers say taxpayers are doling out nearly $900 million a year to supplement the wages of bank tellers, which amounts to a public subsidy for multibillion-dollar banks. The workers collect $105 million in food stamps, $250 million through the earned income tax credit and $534 million by way of Medicaid and the Children?s Health Insurance Program, according to the University of California at Berkeley?s Labor Center.

More here...

http://billmoyers.com/2013/12/04/mor...nce-to-get-by/