04-09-2010, 01:27 PM
<!--quoteo(post=87421:date=Apr 9 2010, 11:56 AM:name=vitaminB)-->QUOTE (vitaminB @ Apr 9 2010, 11:56 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec--><!--quoteo(post=87417:date=Apr 9 2010, 12:38 PM:name=Destined)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Destined @ Apr 9 2010, 12:38 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec--><!--quoteo(post=87349:date=Apr 9 2010, 06:34 AM:name=jstraw)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (jstraw @ Apr 9 2010, 06:34 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec--><!--quoteo(post=87262:date=Apr 8 2010, 08:48 PM:name=Anna2010)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Anna2010 @ Apr 8 2010, 08:48 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->Minimum wage jobs are not meant to be jobs to raise a family on, despite what some liberal politicians may try to claim. They were intended to be entry level jobs for high school & college age kids to develop job stills or for people to work as secondary jobs. As we develop our employment still then we "graduate" to the next level in our working careers and we begin to earn more money.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Your views on minimum wage employment are a Republican fantasy.
As our manufacturing sector continues to contract and we become ever more a service economy, the ratio of grownups with families to up-the-ladder jobs becomes increasingly out of wack.
Service jobs cannot be outsourced. Tasks that must be performed in our homes, our retail stores, our hospitals, our office buildings and our restaurants...must be performed on premises. Since demand for this labor is not going to be diminishing any time soon, it's a free-market wet dream to eliminate as many better paying jobs as possible.
Moving manufacturing and tech jobs offshore accomplishes two things. It reduces these costs of doing business and puts more people in competition for the remaining, menial jobs, thereby putting downward pressure on the value of that labor. This results in real, adjusted earning power by people in the service sector falling off a cliff relative to what it costs to support a family above the poverty line.
I'll skip the part of my response that describes the importance of undocumented workers to this G.O.P. utopia, and how hypocritical conservatives rail against them out of one side of their mouth to score political points with xenophobes while at the same time refusing to do anything that would undermine the benefits they harvest from having a cheap, fearful source of labor ever present.
The idea that grocery baggers, bus boys, groundskeepers, etc. are primarily young people entering the workforce, hasn't been true for decades. Our economy needs a lot of people doing this work and frankly, <i>making more people</i> to do the work. Allowing them (us) to live and raise their families in dignity and security is the right thing to do.
Further, the standard conservative arguments and criticisms regarding low-wage earners are dishonest. Examples of individuals who have educated or entrepreneured themselves out of poverty are a canard and irrelevant. Individuals can do this, for sure. But there is not room in our economy for tens of millions of additional people to do this. Unskilled labor must still be done by many millions of people.
There is no America possible where 300 million people reside in the middle class. It is possible to decrease the rate at which the gap between the rich and poor grows. Our tax system needs to reward reinvestment in hiring, research and development, infrastructure, the provision of healthcare, etc., so that the oligarchs running things have incentive to do the sort of things that diminish that gap, rather than just stuff another billion into their golden mattresses.
Nothing that smells any good trickles down. The free market is frankly a myth. It's a game rigged by the interests that have the leverage to rig it.
If it's not managed better the number of people that can afford to buy all the crap shrinks. We have a consumerist culture that has done a really good job of keeping people lusting after things they can do without. But there are limits. Ask anyone that owns a restaurant or a clothing store what the recession has done to consumer behavior. And remember when gas was pushing $4 in '08? Pushed, people will begin to exercise discretion.
Pushed, people can get real ugly too. Where do you think all this circle the wagons tea bagger crap comes from?
Economies managed for the benefit of the few lead to revolutions. A decent minimum wage is a part of having a society where the people that we rely on to do the least pleasant tasks can do so in dignity and security.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You have way too much time on your hands.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm guessing it's a result of some Mexican taking his job bussing tables at Applebees.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's a result of being on painkillers on my day off.
Your views on minimum wage employment are a Republican fantasy.
As our manufacturing sector continues to contract and we become ever more a service economy, the ratio of grownups with families to up-the-ladder jobs becomes increasingly out of wack.
Service jobs cannot be outsourced. Tasks that must be performed in our homes, our retail stores, our hospitals, our office buildings and our restaurants...must be performed on premises. Since demand for this labor is not going to be diminishing any time soon, it's a free-market wet dream to eliminate as many better paying jobs as possible.
Moving manufacturing and tech jobs offshore accomplishes two things. It reduces these costs of doing business and puts more people in competition for the remaining, menial jobs, thereby putting downward pressure on the value of that labor. This results in real, adjusted earning power by people in the service sector falling off a cliff relative to what it costs to support a family above the poverty line.
I'll skip the part of my response that describes the importance of undocumented workers to this G.O.P. utopia, and how hypocritical conservatives rail against them out of one side of their mouth to score political points with xenophobes while at the same time refusing to do anything that would undermine the benefits they harvest from having a cheap, fearful source of labor ever present.
The idea that grocery baggers, bus boys, groundskeepers, etc. are primarily young people entering the workforce, hasn't been true for decades. Our economy needs a lot of people doing this work and frankly, <i>making more people</i> to do the work. Allowing them (us) to live and raise their families in dignity and security is the right thing to do.
Further, the standard conservative arguments and criticisms regarding low-wage earners are dishonest. Examples of individuals who have educated or entrepreneured themselves out of poverty are a canard and irrelevant. Individuals can do this, for sure. But there is not room in our economy for tens of millions of additional people to do this. Unskilled labor must still be done by many millions of people.
There is no America possible where 300 million people reside in the middle class. It is possible to decrease the rate at which the gap between the rich and poor grows. Our tax system needs to reward reinvestment in hiring, research and development, infrastructure, the provision of healthcare, etc., so that the oligarchs running things have incentive to do the sort of things that diminish that gap, rather than just stuff another billion into their golden mattresses.
Nothing that smells any good trickles down. The free market is frankly a myth. It's a game rigged by the interests that have the leverage to rig it.
If it's not managed better the number of people that can afford to buy all the crap shrinks. We have a consumerist culture that has done a really good job of keeping people lusting after things they can do without. But there are limits. Ask anyone that owns a restaurant or a clothing store what the recession has done to consumer behavior. And remember when gas was pushing $4 in '08? Pushed, people will begin to exercise discretion.
Pushed, people can get real ugly too. Where do you think all this circle the wagons tea bagger crap comes from?
Economies managed for the benefit of the few lead to revolutions. A decent minimum wage is a part of having a society where the people that we rely on to do the least pleasant tasks can do so in dignity and security.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You have way too much time on your hands.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm guessing it's a result of some Mexican taking his job bussing tables at Applebees.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's a result of being on painkillers on my day off.