Stop Raising The Minimum Wage & Stop Whining

reply to post by DINSTAAR


So if I'm reading you right, you're suggesting that the right thing economically to do is move everything off shore, put Americans out of work, break out the unions, cancell the people's pensions (United, Delta, GM already have done this and the folks who built these massive companies lost everything) put millions out of work, and then offer them something at a fraction of what they originally made, run up the deficit, then start some wars to boost military contracts, then pretent to increase social services for those at the bottom of the feeder, when in fact you have decreased them. So you chose "economics" over the country. I see the point, but isn't there also a point to protecting national interests and making your country stronger, not weaker? These policies based on that economic theory are at present destroying this country (USA, for those who are international). America used to make things, now we are cooking one another hamburgers (largly going unchecked by inspectors, but that's another story) and ringing up cheep plastic goods manufactured in China, at our American check out stands.

1. I would first like to state that I am lucky enough to have no kids of my own because I am careful. I don't even own the dog I so desperately want to find because I don't think that would be the brightest thing to do with my current wage.

2. I'm in West Virginia. We are currently the second poorest state by per capita income at only $16,477/person. The only jobs around here are the minimum wage ones. If you can get an education and you want a decent wage, you have to move.

3. The government exists to take care of it's people when they need it and that government is made up of the able bodied. At least a GOOD government is. If a government doesn't take care of those within it's borders taht need the help, then why does it even exist? There would be no use for it what so ever.

4. The "Fortune 500" companies are the companies that are run like a pyramid scheme. Imagine two pyramids on top of each other with one of them upside down. The one right-side represents the employees. More lower level workers at the bottom, with one "point" or boss at the top. Then the upside down pyramid represents the cash flow. The thing is, it isn't about the CEO getting so much money while doing nothing, but instead it's about how he pays minimum wage to as many of the workers he has as possible in order to maximize profits.

5. I work in a pharmacy. I do exactly the same thing they do in a hospital, but I get paid approximately one-third the amount they do per an hour because I work in retail. The only raise I get is a maximum of 5% on my yearly evaluation. That's on a scale of a possible 1%-5%. At the current minimum wage in my state, which is one year ahead of the federal regulations for a company the size of the one I work for, that would be $0.36 with before the minimum wage going up would be $0.26 for me. So either way, it's not that much. Each cent is only $19.20/year more. The current wage increase gives me $4,032 more a year. That's a down payment on a car, which because of insurance I would have to owe nothing on since all available money would go towards the insurance.

I ask you, how much will this break the company I work for? That quite obviously depends upon the company. Well, consider the fact the company I work for is CVS. Who, in the areas where they currently have stores, are usually number one in sales and are never further down than number 5. I make sure your loved ones get their nitro pills, and the right number of them at the right strength, so that in an emergency they'll live. I make sure you're healthy by making sure that you get the right drug when the doctor prescribes you something. The pharmacist CHECKS to make sure we did everything right AND that your doctor did his work right. They do the interactions and figuring out if the drug is something you shouldn't take because you fall in that high risk for something group.

The pharmacist gets paid a NICE salary, albight no lunch break during a 12 hour shift, for their education that took them many years to complete. My job pays me the bare minimum because I got on the job training as opposed to reading a book. So for doing things the hard way and actually having experience, I get one done over on me. Gee, thanks.

As for unfortunate events: My mother suffers from cronic migraines thanks to a drunk driver that wrecked into her car. She can no longer work thanks to this. She was nearly done with her double degrees in teaching English and Special Education. Now she has to get SSI. She gets less than I do on minimum wage. So tell me why we can't raise these people's benefits also and stop spending $3B a day in Iraq. Besides, Afghanistan is where we should have gone. Not to mention Suddam at least kept the peace in Iraq. Even if he was evil...

P.S. I won't even mention how I live on $986/month. (That's post taxes.)

Skyshow has made the most sense of anyone in this thread. People your anger is focused in the wrong direction look no further than Washington if you really want someone to point fingers at.

reply to post by Rockpuck

THANK YOU,reality bytes what life costs to live you need $20 hr break even point.war on drugs makes two types of folks users & non ,discriminating for education and jobs. users get low pay non get big pay (unless job by deceit)rich lie to get it, poor dont care new job every day to pay for drugs,the rich hide drug use with their pretty cloths and looks. in another word the poor are slaves to the dollar just to exist,(drugs help cope with being poor)

You guy's and gal's have been awesome in your replies and I've learned alot from it. Unfortunately I have to work in the morning and minimum wage is catching up with me and I need to figure out how to get a raise from my employer, not the government, who should be protecting our rights, borders and security. I'll be back tomorrow to discuss minimum wage and all of you have been so good and informative, Thank You,

Solarskye

Originally posted by skyshow
reply to post by skyshow

 

but right now I am so sick to my stomach over these issues, the madness, and the crooked doings that hurt the lower working class the most, that frankly I don't have the heart to type anymore. If you want to know more, start with a Business and Society text book, go to the library and look up some of the research, and read "A People's History of the United States, 1492-PRESENT" by Dr. Howard Zinn.

Here's to the raise...cheers! At least we the people got that. Now we need to start demanding more, we can start at the ballot box this November.

I hear you on this truly and I guess the place to start is the ballot box but I've lived through many presidents(Truman through Bush) and watched the faces change but the agenda stay more or less the same with the banks and corporations methodically undoing all the restrictions that kept them in check in the early part of the Twentieth century after the crash...that is why I suggest that people take a page out of an old book called self-reliance and the power of community where smaller groups of folks come together to come up with solutions and ideas to help each other and our wider communities thrive....this is the true spirit of conservatism that has been temporarily lost in this country...self reliance....we have been sold a bill of goods by both of the big parties...they sold their souls and ours for a "few dollars more"...we need to stop pretending that the Fed can save us...they can't save themselves let alone anyone else...when we accept this we will turn to the real power in the land - each other and ourselves...self reliance is not something you do all by yourself..its something you do creatively with others of like mind....

You Americans must be in BIG BIG BIG trouble. I'm 16 and earn $14 an hour.

Why do they pay so low in the first place?

[edit on 25/7/2008 by C0bzz]

reply to post by realshanti


I agree with you as well. People used to grow their own gardens and canned foods, also grew more fruit trees, and some of these would trade their produce for eggs from one of the neighbors and so on. But the ballot box isn't just check here for president...it also includes state and county, and city (notice how we have multiple layers...another useful design to help maintain the structure) and I will wager that the most change starts at the bottom. The dem's are certainly far from being full of angels, but I will suggest we look for candidates starting at the bottom and work our way up who support a platform, and the ideals closest to those of the working class. It would be even better if we could have a viable third or fourth party in the mix that would help us get out from underneath all this corporate and elitist control, however the delegate system ensures that we keep this two party system. I suggest (I'm bias, and fully admit that ) we vote Democratic, but we must be careful and select the right ones. We need to try and find out who are the most corporate and not vote for them, but instead support the candidates who are more in league with the common man (and not like Bush and the phony ranch garbage where he does photo ops clearing brush...) But really take the time to dig and learn about them...City Council, Mayor, Sheriff, State representatives etc... I know it takes more work, but if we start showing up at party meetings at the local level, and learning about who is running, and talking with them even, we can begin a huge change in this country and good things will come out of it. Or we can say "it's too much trouble" and instead have a few beers and watch it all play out on TV year after year.

Anyway, I agree with the previous poster. I have enjoyed reading this thread, but I also need sleep and try to figure out a way of not slipping further and further behind.

Here's to the working class in America...Cheers!

So if I'm reading you right, you're suggesting that the right thing economically to do is move everything off shore, put Americans out of work, break out the unions, cancell the people's pensions (United, Delta, GM already have done this and the folks who built these massive companies lost everything) put millions out of work, and then offer them something at a fraction of what they originally made, run up the deficit, then start some wars to boost military contracts, then pretent to increase social services for those at the bottom of the feeder, when in fact you have decreased them.

Straw man.... again.... wow.
You are reading me wrong. You assume too much and jump to ridiculous conclusions. I am just saying that nothing is static in the markets, and change is not bad. Stagnation is actually the worst possible scenario for the American people and this is why the Unions, Big Business (Oligopoly) and the politicians want it. They want to maintain power.

I said nothing about canceling pensions. That is a contract that should be binding.

These policies based on that economic theory are at present destroying this country (USA, for those who are international).

What?! America's biggest problems are in sectors dominated by political agendas and/or federal control. It doesn't surprise me to hear rhetoric like this when the media uses the same 'logic' in its interpretation of statistics(GE owns NBC fyi). What is economic about lending money to people you know you can't expect to pay? Frankie Mac, Fannie Mae.... both are Federal, and both failed. The mortgage crisis is a crisis of economic accountability. We have none when the government will bail out any business that fails and crap on the average hard working American.

Free markets work for everyone, and this is why our government and the power players stifle it. They refuse to share the reigns with commoners. Innovation comes from the bottom up, and innovation makes old things obsolete. There are laws against innovation in this country. Look at Nuclear power, or Hydrogen fuels. Why do we still drive cars that run on the same fuel as 80 years ago? That is like being forced to use floppy disks.

Rather than having a minimum wage, honestly, I'd rather everyone made money based upon how hard they worked, regardless of what it was that they worked at - cleaning toilets, to mechanic, to lawyer or doctor. If you achieve x amount of work done, regardless of how long it takes to do it, then you should get x amount of pay.. I think the people that are being carried are not necessarily at any particular wage level, I think the people that get money for nothing are the ones that show up and don't work. I see it at my job all the time, I work probably, on an average day, four times as hard as my next hardest working coworker. Americans don't believe in hard work, mostly, they're just lazy. Every tier and every kind of job needs somebody to do it, at least until we all own robots, but if you're working hard, it shouldn't be that you make the same as the person ostensibly doing your job who just shows up to socialize with their friends all day.

reply to post by skyshow


I would absolutely love to see any peer reviewed quantitative research that shows the minimum wage does anything but harm the economy and all workers over the long-term. My main area of research in my PhD program is economic development, and I would say 99% of the research points towards minimum wage being bad. For every 1 study you can find that says its good, I can find numerous that say the opposite. The consensus is amazing for academia.

All the research I have seen says minimum wage causes inflation and increases cost of living, that is exactly what the math shows. The fact that you call something supported by a vast majority of liberal academics who would love to support the minimum wage a "right-wing lie" shows that you have quite a partisan agenda going on here.

Your posting smacks of classical populist propaganda and absolutely pedestrian class warfare tactics. Your goal is to draw an artificial line and demonize "the elites" and "corporations" and shifting the all the blame to them, while making the "average worker" an angel. The rhetoric is baseless and is truly a very transparent attempt to simply piss people off at the evil "elites." Tell me, who is the elite? What makes someone elite? Why are corporations so bad? What constitutes a good corporation? At what size do they become bad? I ask these questions because like all populist propaganda, your rhetoric will fail when your forced to define what your saying - which is why you will deflect when and if you respond to this.

Many parties are responsible for the trillion dollar deficits, including the welfare queens you are attempting to defend. It takes two to tango and social entitlements are massive portions of the state and local government budgets. That is part of the smoke and mirrors populists use: they act as if entitlement spending at the federal level is low, ignoring the fact that local governments have through federal mandates been forced to provide massive amounts of entitlements either directly or through maintaining entitlement infrastructure.

[edit on 25-7-2008 by ALightinDarkness]

Let's stay on topic please.

Focus on posts, not posters!

Originally posted by 38181
Every time they raise minimun wage, people loose there jobs.

Why?

Ask the small business owner who is struggling to pay their employees in the first place!

In which case the small business was unviable in the first place. This same argument and nonsense was floated around the UK before they introduced a minimum wage it was proven to be utter ........ But the rich want you all to believe it because that allows them to make more money with lower wages.

Wake up folks stop behaving like sheep for the rich.

The nature of exploitation in the UK has changed which is why the rich no longer try and con us about the minimum wage. Instead they.......no I won't say , it will do you some good to research what. The same change is happening in the states though

Originally posted by Solarskye
reply to post by kinda kurious

 

I do treat people with respect, but I do have my own opinions. I said I help others all I can and wish I could do more. I guess I'm angry that our government has let us down by not trying their best to change the way they spend money. And the US tax code has sent companies that were once thriving in America across the borders and over seas. I was once homeless and dirt poor and I thank my lucky stars that I got up one day and went to a wood mill and just by luck they needed someone right away and I started that day and worked there until the family business closed down. I know there are different circumstances for everyone so after reading everyone's opinions I'm not as mad anymore.

exactly.. circumstances... I never made the best choices growing up.. by far not the best... and right when im turning things around the mother of my kid has a traumatic brain injury.. so now I hafta deal with my problems (oxycontin addict of 5 years now clean 8 months, 2 months before her accident) and taking care of her 24/7 aswell as our 3 yr old daughter..

I am trying to do school but have had to take a few runs at it because I have to take my girl to physio during the day so its hard...... BUT

as someone (may have been you) that mentioned it.. its about wanting it bad enough and doing the work.. nothings easy.. only for a few! but its that much more satisfying when you acheive the seeminlgy impossible... and yes I know how bad that sounds but its true... im a perfect example.. lol.. im far from perfect and not quite at my goal.. but im doing way more than I ever thought I could handle and feel better because of it!

great post by the way very interesting discussion

reply to post by Solarskye


A flag and a star from me!!!

You are absolutely right in your outrage and on the fact that Americans are getting soft, and socialist, if I might add. It seems no politician or Party is willing to put a stop to these lazy slobs that just want a free ride, a lot of pot and booze and to live off of our hard earned $. They are attempting to drag us all down to their level, and keep whining at the people that have a good life, while being payed by those same people they whine about.

Fortunately, I predict, a real crises is coming. The natural selection, of the fittest and useful is inevitable and these cancers of society will be wiped away for good...

Originally posted by Solarskye

Give me some opinions members, I'm trying to stay calm about this and I know that not everyone is in the same situation when it comes to minimum wage, but to try to raise a family on it is absurd and safe sex should be practiced until they can afford a family.

Wage and Hour Division

Oh, I forgot, don't stay call, share your outrage.
Pressure your Congressman to put forth legislation that puts an end to the socialist agenda of some misguided, or outright traitorous, individuals in the government (looks like McCarthy didn't root them all out, maybe we need a new one?!).

Vote only for Candidates that will reduce public spending on the "building of a welfare state in America"!!!

Again, great post!!!

reply to post by Unit541


while that may work well at the middle class level.. do u know how far the big wigs take it.. a C.E.O of a major corp can run a bussiness into the ground and still get his/her multimillion dollor severance packages, including pension and screw all the other employees,, dick chaney anyone?? and its obvious that some do it on purpose so they can quickly move on to be V.P or other job so they can do it again to another company... and as far as min wage going up causing everything else go up.. that acctually goes up when the cost of living goes up....

reply to post by malcr


IMHO that would be what the big corps want so we have to rely on them for everything..

reply to post by malcr


Oh man, thats funny. The viability of a business should be determined by the markets, not by the nanny state stepping in and screwing with it. The government stepping in and raising costs on businesses does not mean they were not viable, it means the government is interfering unnecessarily with the government.

You clearly haven't done 5 minutes of research on the minimum wage. The minimum wage hurts the poor and benefits the rich. Do some research before buying into the populist propaganda.