minimum wage increase killed by republicans

[EricTheRed 0]

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I'm not claiming I'd lay off three employees to cover it. In reviewing the post, yeah, it looks that way.

Would I fire John? Yeah, I would. Or I'd lower his hours. I am simply fed up with the idea that employers are gravy trains, and that they should simply suck it up. Those of us who run businesses know what it's all about.

Then again, this change doesn't affect me much, Maybe, in light of this, I'm paying my other employees far too much. I'll speak to them about taking a pay cut. Maybe only 200 or 300 per month. It's not like they need it.

I see many employers every day and I have found very few that have any employees onthe payroll that they could do without. Productivity levels are very high and staffing levels have already been cut to the bare minimum to accomplish the task at hand in most cases. You may be an exception but most paople hire an employee based on the amount of production per man hour needed, not out of charity.
My guess is that while you say that you would be forced to lay someone off, you wouldn't really do it because to do so would wither increase the workload on the remaining workers, or decrease your productivity unacceptably requiring you to decrease your cash flow. You MIGHT be able to raise prices to compensate but the competition may not allow you to do this.

The federal manimum wage is a joke, and doesn't affect you in CA anyway (what's the state min?)
Here in Oregon and Washington there are just as many burger flippers at McD's and just as many Greeters at Wally World as there are in TX, even though there is a vast digfference in minimum wage .

Explain that...

illegible usually

[Ron 10]

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I have no sympathy for a man earning 6 figures that purchases expensive remote controlled airplanes instead of giving that money to minimum wage workers to supplement their income or paying from their own pocket to assist starving grad students living in substandard housing.

HEY!!!! I buy expensive toy planes AND live in substandard housing....

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[lawrocket 3]

YEs, and in Oregon you cannot pump your own gas. There are more gas pumpers in Oregon than in Texas, despite the higher wage.

So, what gives?

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[EricTheRed 0]

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Classic economics say that the economy will bear what the market requires -- classic economics will bear the pareto effiiency -- so the minimum wage is what is necessary,. If a job is in demand, then the employer will pay whatever is necessary. Most economists say that minimum wage is artificial and detrimental and we should instead rely on market forces.

That is neglecting the influence of illegal labor. Take away the estimated 3 million illegal immigrants from our available labor pool and the minimum wage would become irrelevant very quickly.

illegible usually

[EricTheRed 0]

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YEs, and in Oregon you cannot pump your own gas. There are more gas pumpers in Oregon than in Texas, despite the higher wage.

There are other differences as well, for example Texas (just using it a an example because I have lived there) exempts tipped employees from the minimum wage, so wait staff at a restaurant are often paid next to nothing (some places even consider the staff to be independent contractors and pay them nothing) and are not covered by workers comp.
In Washington the wait staff receives comp coverage (at one of the higher rates in the country) and a minimum wage of $7.35. Most employers also have to offer health benefits to full time workers to keep staff.
Despite these huge differences the cost of a meal at Outback Steak is the same.

Go figure.

illegible usually

[rehmwa 2]

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I have no sympathy for a man earning 6 figures that purchases expensive remote controlled airplanes instead of giving that money to minimum wage workers to supplement their income or paying from their own pocket to assist starving grad students living in substandard housing.

HEY!!!! I buy expensive toy planes AND live in substandard housing....

no sympathy - now go give yourself that money. right now

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[billvon 3,120]

>I am simply fed up with the idea that employers are gravy trains, and
>that they should simply suck it up. Those of us who run businesses know
>what it's all about.

And minimum wage employees know what it's all about too. And so do people who live on welfare. Unfortunately, they don't often agree on "what it's all about."

I don't think minimum wage needs to be as high as it is. On the other hand, a national minumum wage is a good idea. Why? Because you will pay it one way or another. If you pay your employees so little that they go on welfare (a la Walmart) you will make out like a bandit for a while, because you can reduce their pay to artificially low levels and still have them work there (due to the welfare supplement.) Indeed, market forces will demand that you do that. However, in the long run, the amount you save on employee wages will be lost in higher taxes to support all those people on welfare. It's the classic prisoner's dilemma, and everyone chooses the easy way out of it.

So I think there needs to be a level of minimum wage, such that most people making it can live without welfare. (Yeah, I know, there's some case of a woman with 311 kids who you'd have to pay $160,000 a year or she'll be on welfare, but we're talking most people here.)

[EricTheRed 0]

But Bill, if you can find someone else to pay the taxes to subsidize your workers (or better yet just sweep the cost under the rug by running massive deficits) why would you want to pay a living wage?

illegible usually

[kallend 2,151]

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No, more like apprentices in a formal apprenticeship system.

no, more like slaves or cult members

.

I think you are seriously underestimating the evils of slavery.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[KevinMcGuire 0]

On a side note, walmart is in fact the anti christ. They and those who shop there are helping to destroy our economy. Just wanted to throw that out there

[billvon 3,120]

> On a side note, walmart is in fact the anti christ.

Well, they're great if you live in China. But I agree with your basic idea. I find it funny that people think shopping at Wal-Mart is supporting the US economy.

[KevinMcGuire 0]

I once knew a guy who owned a factory that made little fans like the kind you might put on your desk. His main buyer of those fans was Walmart. Walmart came to him one day and said," we don't want to pay your price anymore for these fans. If you want to keep selling them to us, you'll have to lower your price".
He was faced with a delema. Close his doors or take his operation over seas. Either way he faced putting a hundred or so people out of work. 'That was 1996.

One year later, many of those same employees who had been put out of work were then quoted on their local news chanels bitching about how their job went away and of course it must have been the presidents or some one elses fault

I always wondered and still do as to just how many of those workers made Walmart their first stop when buying the things they needed? Ironic isn't it?

[kelpdiver 2]

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RA's are students. The training they receive is considered part of their compensation. Rather like medical doctors doing their internships.

Oh, you mean sorta like new hires at a business, who start out at minimum wage, acquire training and then recieve raises as they progress?

oh, the irony here is delicious. Kallend the serf master lecturing other serf masters about how wrong it is.

At best, the multiyear abuse of grad students in some fields might be viewed as expensive hazing perpetuated by each subsequent generation. But that would probably deserve its own thread.

[rehmwa 2]

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No, more like apprentices in a formal apprenticeship system.

no, more like slaves or cult members .

I think you are seriously underestimating the evils of slavery.

Hey, even when college professors do it it's still exploitation. One could argue it's even worse than when a small businessman does it. The small businessman has to stay in business and feed his family (and gas his three boats), but some profs have tenure and more security so it must just be for the fun of it for them rather than survival.

Kind of like a cat playing with a mouse carcass.

edit: John - the little "" indicates the humor found in unreasonable extrapolation of certain comparisons - you do it too much also be getting all self righteous. I figured you didn't need a program to pick up on it. My bad.

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[TomAiello 26]

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I have no sympathy for a man earning 6 figures that purchases expensive remote controlled airplanes instead of giving that money to minimum wage workers to supplement their income or paying from their own pocket to assist starving grad students living in substandard housing.

Dude, play the ball, not the player.

Bringing someone's personal circumstances into this kind of discussion is not only crass--it also shows that you're not willing to think about their points and respond to them in an intelligent manner.

-- Tom Aiello

Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[rehmwa 2]

Sorry Tom - he ping pongs also and I was having ironic fun. If you think that's out of line of the new rules I have no issue falling off of it.

edit: I just looked up crass in the dictionary - but now I need to look up some of the words used in the definition. Whew, this might take a while..... Hey, I may be gross, and I may be stupid, but I'm not a lesbian.

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[lawrocket 3]

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It's the classic prisoner's dilemma, and everyone chooses the easy way out of it.

Excellent points, bill. In other words, we've seen the US society socially engineered to create gravy trains.

What was that quote? "Over 5,000 years ago, Moses said to the children of Israel, "Pick up your shovels, mount your asses and camels, and I will lead you to the Promised Land."

Nearly 5,000 years later, Roosevelt said, "Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, and light up a Camel; this is the Promised Land!"

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[kmcguffee 0]

LOL, that's a great quote Lawrocket. I've never heard that one. Kind of along the same lines, this is one that was posted at someones desk at work:

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The following was written by Professor Alexander Fraser Tytler shortly before our original 13 colonies gained their independence from Great Britain.

He was speaking of the Athenian Republic some 2000 years before.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (generous benefits) from the public treasury."

"From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

These nations have progressed through this sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage."

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." Ben Franklin

[Gravitymaster 0]

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LOL, that's a great quote Lawrocket. I've never heard that one. Kind of along the same lines, this is one that was posted at someones desk at work:

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The following was written by Professor Alexander Fraser Tytler shortly before our original 13 colonies gained their independence from Great Britain.

He was speaking of the Athenian Republic some 2000 years before.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (generous benefits) from the public treasury."

"From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

These nations have progressed through this sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage."

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp

[Ron 10]

I did like this part

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By calculating the murder rate for each county and then taking the averages, we find a murder rate (defined as number of murders per 100,000 residents) of about 5.2 for the "average" Gore county and 3.3 for the average Bush county. But since people, rather than counties, commit murders, a more appropriate approach is to calculate the total number of murders in the counties won by each candidate and divide that figure by the total number of residents in those counties. This more appropriate method yields the following average murder rates in counties won by each candidate:


Gore: 6.5
Bush: 4.1

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[Gravitymaster 0]

I still laugh when I see this one.

[kallend 2,151]

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RA's are students. The training they receive is considered part of their compensation. Rather like medical doctors doing their internships.

Oh, you mean sorta like new hires at a business, who start out at minimum wage, acquire training and then recieve raises as they progress?

oh, the irony here is delicious. Kallend the serf master lecturing other serf masters about how wrong it is.

At best, the multiyear abuse of grad students in some fields might be viewed as expensive hazing perpetuated by each subsequent generation. But that would probably deserve its own thread.

Let's see, students receive an education WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT, get access to $millions in lab facilities for their thesis work WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT and even receive a small stipend, in exchange for which they spend a few hours each week grading papers or overseeing labs. Yup, they're serfs OK. Funny that so many of them clamor for this servitude that we have to turn many of them away.

At my school the current value of an RA or TA position comes to around $42,000/year. Not bad for a serf.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[lawrocket 3]

Thank you, professor. I would have gladly accepted some research position in lieu of paying for law school. Perhaps I wouldn't be over $100k in the hole right now.

Undergrads have another word for that. It's called "merit scholarship." I'll leave athletic scholarship out of this equation...

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Let's see, students receive an education WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT, get access to $millions in lab facilities for their thesis work WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT and even receive a small stipend, in exchange for which they spend a few hours each week grading papers or overseeing labs

"a few hours each week" HAHAHAHAHA

actually, the whole paragraph was hilarious - the exact BS shovelled out by the U of C people. When the strike happened, it was clear what the role of the grad students was wrt undergrad classes.

[kallend 2,151]

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Let's see, students receive an education WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT, get access to $millions in lab facilities for their thesis work WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT and even receive a small stipend, in exchange for which they spend a few hours each week grading papers or overseeing labs

"a few hours each week" HAHAHAHAHA

actually, the whole paragraph was hilarious - the exact BS shovelled out by the U of C people. When the strike happened, it was clear what the role of the grad students was wrt undergrad classes.

Graduate education is NOT an entitlement program.

There are 3000 colleges and universities in the USA, I'm sure some of them even accept ungrateful folks who complain about getting an expensive education for free.

My one assistant right now works way less than 12 hours per week for me, in exchange for which he gets free tuition through his PhD degree, + room and board and book allowance. He is very happy with the arrangement.

Let's be clear about something, these are people who voluntarily enroll in a university and DON'T have to pay for the education they receive.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.