The minimum wage

So Obama wants to give Americans wages that people can actually live on. But the republicans want to destroy the minimum wage, so that their fat cat corporate friends can pay everyone poverty wages. Just another example of the GOP trying to destroy the middle class, and turn us all into slaves. Union busting is a pet project of the cons. Like the teachers unions in Wisconsin, who can now get paid Walmart wages with no medical benefits or retirement. What sense does it make to get a college education, and still get paid like a McDonalds burger flipper? And if the cons have their way, we'll all be getting paid two dollars an hour, like the migrant farm workers.

It's just another example of moron voters, voting for assholes that are out to screw the very people that vote for them. Case in point...The majority of welfare recipients are in the southern republican states, and they vote for the cons that want to take away their income. Any middle class worker voting for a republican, is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

 

California, with 12% of the U.S. population has 34% of the nations welfare recipients.

 

Let's raise the minimum wage to $105 per hour. That way we'll all be rich and poverty will be non existent

 

Well, that's what they've always done. Why would they have any use for the plight of working people? They depend on a differant type of people. You know---the $$$$$$$$$ people. Instead of beating the shit out of and sometimes killing those that attempt to stick up for themselves like back in the day---they try to do it by law now. Much more civilized, doncha' know.

 

Unfortunately that would not solve the problem. It would however cause a HUGE inflation problem, because there would be too much $ chasing too few goods.

Manufacturing, knowledge and intellectual property, and energy surplus production and storage technologies need to be expanded and increased to truly lower prices on goods so that the average citizen can afford them.

 

Ironically if it weren't illegal to burn money I wonder if destroying a lot of the physical money out there would help fight deflation? and yeah I just googled some stuff and it depends on what years minimum wage you go by. We aren't that much better off from 1950's minimum wage than we are 2013 However, from 1974, their minimum wage is hire then todays when you count inflation at just a little over 18,000 dollars working 40 hours a week. $18,187.74 to be exact

 

Who works for minimum wage?

 

students and dumb people

 

Sometimes it can not be help. For example around here everyone is wanting even the minimum wage jobs so unemployment is high, so some people by age 20 something even with applying to jobs every day do not find a job then its like oh you have no work experience, so eventually one becomes homeless, and can't get a job because they are homeless and have no work history. Although I do suppose that could be solved by doing volunteer work

 

I honestly have never seen a minimum wage job. McDonalds lowest paid position is higher, although slightly.

The farms that I worked on in high school paid me $10+ an hour. And they paid the illegals at least $8. More depending on how much work they do. Some were making up to $15 in the tobacco fields. And that was when minimum wage was $5.15.

 

I think you mean inflation....not deflation.

And while burning money is illegal for the common citizen to do, the equivalent would be if TheFed simply took money out of circulation and stored it somewhere.

 

sorry didn't have my glasses on and when i get heated on something I don't tend to proof read, I meant inflation, I was thinking deflation, because I was thinking that would do the opposite of inflation lol

 

Here’s some musings

I’m all for a minimum wage but I’d want it everywhere – how about if we worked out what a good living wage was in differing countries then banned the import of goods from countries that didn’t at the least pay that amount to their workers?


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Then you would have to raise wages in your country so people can buy the more expensive stuff produced in countries with good living wages.

This, of course, will drive prices higher still.

This is (partly) why we have an economic crisis: we are running out of slave labour countries.

 

Thing is that if you are solely dependent on cheap foreign goods to keep your domestic standard of living level even I think you’re likely only to see it decrease over time anyway.

I think this was one of the cons of economic globalisation (for many in the west) it often hid real term decreases in people’s income with cheaper products from low wage countries.

Wouldn’t it be better to re-balance the economy so the dependence on imports was not so strong?

Also there is the other thing which is that if the foreign labour has more disposable income it might buy other countries goods.

 

It was similar on the farms I worked on in high school. I got something around $10, if I remember right. Been a while. The illegals got more than minimum wage as well.

I had friends who worked at places like Pizza Hut in high school and I think they got minimum wage when they started, but got raises in relatively short order after starting.

 

The U.S. trade deficit is and has been $50 billion per month, every month for the last 28 years. That means we import $50 billion per month more than we export. Half the food we buy in the grocery store is from Central and South America, because they pay their workers 50 cents and hour, and our farmers have to pay $6.00 an hour. So there's no way the U.S. farmer can compete with that.
Almost everything in Walmart is from China, India and South America. The Walmart family is the richest family in America, worth over $200 billion. And they do it by selling cheap foreign goods, and paying their workers minimum wage and no benefits.
The McDonalds CEO is paid $13 million per year, and managers are paid poverty wages.
CEO pay is up 600% in the last ten years, and everyone else's pay is either stagnant or has gone down, because of the unemployment crisis caused by the economic collapse in 2007. 90% of the jobs created have been minimum wage jobs, while the jobs lost were middle class jobs.
Congress makes an average $174,000.00 a year, plus benefits, plus travel allowance, plus office and staff allowance, plus 12 weeks paid vacation. They just cut federal workers pay by 20% with sequester, but didn't cut their own pay one dime.
And hardly anyone is able to connect the dots. But then when you live the fat cat life, connecting the dots isn't as important as sitting on the forums all day.

 

It sounds like a good theory but I don't know if it could work. I just don't have enough background on that.

But I think in the end it comes down to changing the political system, because clearly it doesn't work. And the one way to do that I can see is through economics. The Occupy Movement said "we are the 99%" and if the 99% stop consuming for a while they could drive some very interesting ideas home.

But that's just a dream.

 

I agree that changing the political system is what it all comes down to. That said, I don't think economics is the path that will bring about that change. For example, the problem with the Occupy Movement and their "we are the 99%" idea is that, at the end of the day, they didn't represent or speak for that 99% at all. The 99% isn't anywhere near united.