response 13 of 176:

Mar 10 13:56 UTC 2006

resp:12 Indeed they are. But people in this country have a serious 
moral objections to giving people something for nothing combined with a 
dislike of seeing people starve. Most people dont want to give people 
cash which they could spend on immoral things. 

Personally, I think it would be easier for everyone if it were just 
cash. 

response 15 of 176:

Mar 10 16:36 UTC 2006

I talked to a cashier at a W. Virgina Walmart who said nearly everyone working
there had subsidized rent, and of course also Food Stamps and Medicaid.  If
Walmart were forced to pay higher wages, it would save the government from
subsidizing their employees.  Junk food places that hire illegal aliens could
continue to pay whatever they are already paying under the counter, and the
illegal aliens could continue to subsidize our Social Security system because
they use fake cards and pay into Social Security but cannot collect from it.
Teenagers might have a harder time competing with them and would end up
earning less money and maybe spending more time on schoolwork, and perhaps
a higher percentage would graduate high school.

response 17 of 176:

Mar 10 22:18 UTC 2006

Actually a few states, like New York State, have state minimum wage laws which
supercede federal minimum wage laws if the state rate is higher.  Here in NY,
the minimum wage since January has been $7.05/hr.  California's minimum wage
is $6.75 *except* in San Francisco, where it is $8.50 an hour.

Here is a table of minimum wages:

http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/america.htm#NewYork

The problem is stingy states like Michigan which won't estalblish any rate
higher than the federal rate.  Or Ohio, where the state rate is actually LOWER
than the federal rate.

response 19 of 176:

Mar 10 22:37 UTC 2006

no kennedy does get it.  the less income a person has, the more dependent that
person is going to be on the government.  nharmon if you really are a fiscal
conservative, and want a smaller government, you can't NOT be for a higher
minimum wage.  You want people to get off the welfare rolls?  pay'em more
money!

response 21 of 176:

Mar 10 23:00 UTC 2006

re #20 no, you missed that episode.  Kirk and co. take on the great
conservative computer, which is controlling all the androids by remote, and
disables it by reasoning with it.  When confronted with logic, all the droids
start having smoke come out of them and go into tilt mode.  Thats what we
liberals do  :)

and there was no more prominent liberal in hollywood in the 60's than Gene
Roddenberry

response 23 of 176:

Mar 11 01:32 UTC 2006

I think #21 conclusively proves that Richard really is insane. And BTW, please
don't speak as if you represent liberals. As I've mentioned before, your
inability to present cogent arguments and clear thoughts harms the liberal
cause in ways that are probably beyond your limited comprehension.

response 25 of 176:

Mar 11 02:58 UTC 2006

Here is what I see. A jump in the minimum wage will put some more money
in the pockets of teenagers and ex-cons. This increase might trickle up
to semi-low wage earners like those at Wal-Mart. But this increased cost
will result in increased prices of goods and services for everybody.
Someone else said nothing will change except the numerical values of the
dollar amounts. But that is not true. By increasing the wages, you drive
an even larger division between US wages and wages of other countries.
Thus, in turn, leads to more companies shipping work overseas.

Minimum wage made sense when we manufactored more, and traded in a
regional market. It served to improve competitiveness. But we live in a
gloval market now. Thus, it simply does not make sense any more.

Richard, I really think you lack a sense of basic economics. Hell, I
lack a sense of basic economics. But at least I'm not assuming that
money grows on trees and that magical increases in wages will take
people out of poverty. It will do worse. It will increase the cost of
living, and place said worker into a higher tax bracket.

LOGIC AHEAD === RW LOGIC AHEAD === RW LOGIC AHEAD === RW LOGIC AHEAD ===

I'm surprised liberals aren't against raising the minimum wage because
it is really just a form of regressive taxation.

AHEAD === RW LOGIC AHEAD === RW LOGIC AHEAD === RW LOGIC AHEAD === RW LO


(sorry about the banners, but I just had to  ;)

response 27 of 176:

Mar 11 04:23 UTC 2006

Considering that most unskilled labor jobs are in industries that cannot
easily be outsourced overseas (foodservice, retail, cleaning, etc), I do
not think raising the minimum wage will result in too many jobs going
overseas. If the demand for those jobs is somewhat inelastic as a lot of
people think, it also will not result in too many fewer jobs. As for the
tax bracket issue...well, that seems kind of a weird thing to worry
about. I know that when I started to earn more money and got into a
higher tax bracket, it didnt leave me crying into my oatmeal. But if
that is really a concern, the obvious solution would be to change the
tax code and adjust the brackets. It is possible that raising the
minimum wage could lead to higher prices for things but probably not
enough offset the benefit of a higher minimum wage to the recipients of
said wage. 

There is some validity about the argument that raising the minimum wage
might not benefit the people those proposing it would like to benefit
(i.e. the working poor). A significant number of people in minimum wage
jobs are teenagers and young adults who are still being subsidized by
their parents. This is especially so since the working poor cant afford
to take minimum wage jobs in a labor market where they could get a few
dollars more per hour at a place like WalMart or McDonalds. 

Personally, I would like to see companies change their labor structure
by paying those at the bottom more and those at the top less. Their
overall labor costs would remain the same but would be distributed
differently. Unfortunately, I dont see how government regulation can
accomplish that. I suspect that if enough people cared about such
things, they could force companies to do that with market forces. They
could, as consumers, choose companies with such labor policies and they
could also as stockholders demand the companies pay the CEO less and the
bottom level workers more. I dont see that happening just yet though but
there are a lot of people who take those kinds of things into account
when choosing where to spend their money both as a consumer and as an
investor so such a trend could happen. 

response 29 of 176:

Mar 11 04:47 UTC 2006

You hit on the key, though I don't think you fully realize it. Executive 
salaries in the US are crazy out of control. Each time a board votes an 
increase in compensation, CEOs around the nation smile to themselves 
knowing they can make the case for their next raise by simply pointing to 
the new deal and saying "give me that or I'll go somewhere else to get 
it." There are few market forces in this rarified realm, since there isn't 
a whole lot of "competition" from upstart CEO wannabes a BOD would trust 
with a large company. For this reason, I have no problem whatsoever with a 
law that would link maximum compensation to some metric involving lower 
paid employees.

response 31 of 176:

Mar 11 07:17 UTC 2006

Well, I suppose if you're arguing that minimum wage needs to catch up
for inflation, then ok. But if you're saying you want to go beyond that,
then I suspect other motives.

response 33 of 176:

Mar 11 15:16 UTC 2006

When the last minimum wage increase went into effect I was 16 years old
and had been working for Wal-Mart for a month. I was making something
around $7.00 an hour, and when the increase happened, they raised the
starting wage by about $.50, which bumped me up because I had not had my
first raise yet.

So you see, from experience I can say that a minimum wage increase would
cause other wages to go up through a trickle-up effect. Places like
Wal-Mart, and other semi-low wage employers pay slightly above minimum
wage in order to stay competitive. An increase in the minimum wage means
an increase in their starting wage in order to stay competitive.

I think an increase in minimum wage is simply the wrong way to go about
getting more people off of government assistance. The slight increases
these people might see that tips them over the welfare threshold are not
going to be enough to cover the loss of government benefits.

Case in point: I know of two people who have moved jobs in order to
avoid raises that would have put them over the limit for government
assistance. You can demean them all you wish, but when a single mother
is getting $700/month is subsidies, a $100/month pay raise is not going
to cover that.

IMNSHO, The best way to get people off of governmental assistance is
through educational grants and work training programs.

response 35 of 176:

Mar 11 16:43 UTC 2006

Sure it will. You can apply your education to areas which are not being
outsourced. The problem is we keep chasing our tails with wages and
price increases, while we deflate the value of our dollar, and ship jobs
elsewhere.

Maybe we should do like mexico, convert to a new currency and have a 1
for 2 sale. :P

response 37 of 176:

Mar 11 18:01 UTC 2006

Ok, so why increase the minimum wage?