All I can go by is what history has told us, and it’s not been a pretty picture thus far. While we live with a narrative of progress, and in some cases that is true, there is plenty of evidence to suggest regression as well, on any number of fronts in our capitalist society. If the liberal state was one of the best examples of creating a peaceful and happy society (and I’m not sure that is/was ever fully true in that we lived in a society free of any number of inequalities at any point in our history), it has certainly been a failure in recent years, as inequality has risen with more “free market” ideology. Opportunities that do exist have been hard won for the vast majority of people, often at a great social cost. If the generation of wealth is your deal, that’s great for a few, but it has coincided by a lot of violence historically speaking and I don’t think that is coincidental.
Does it HAVE to be that way? No. HAS it been that way? That answer is a firm yes.
I don’t know what the alternative is. Probably something cobbled together that we haven’t thought of before. Some that doesn’t rely on some sort of utopian ideology of either the Smith or Marx variety.
There is also the fact that getting minimum wage + $0.20 is not much different than just getting minimum wage, but people tend to ignore this when quoting numbers about the “typical minimum wage worker”.
Precisely. Companies are receiving welfare, in a sense, while making money hand over fist. They wouldn’t be able to pay people such shit wages if the U.S. didn’t have social programs to fall back on. So, put the burden directly–and punitively–on those incurring the expense in the first place.
ETA: Forgot to explain “punitively.” Some percentage of people will–either through ignorance of its availability, pride, or inability to jump through bureaucratic hoops–fail to take advantage of social programs. I don’t think massively profitable companies should get a discount because of this factor.
I like that idea, except what are the jobs for machinists out there like. Mike Rowe (you know, that awesome guy from Dirty Jobs), his thing is that there are tons of skilled, blue collar jobs out there going unfilled, good middle class jobs in the industrial sector that no one is taking because they don’t have the skills. I would absolutely like to see a curriculum that supports that. Our think our educational solutions as of late are geared toward the high tech sector, because that is who is putting the benjamins down for school programs (it seems every time I turn around, local schools are adding ipads or new PCs). But many of the unskilled jobs are trending towards service sector–which I think is the specific element of the economy under discussion… Not that you’re not bringing up a valid point, but the economy is so big and convoluted, it’s hard to pin down really.
One study has shown that if Walmart raised its minimum wage to $12 and passed all of that expense to consumers, its customers would be spending an extra $12.50 per year there (a 1.1% increase).
People don’t choose to have children if, because they were raised in impoverished conditions themselves, they lack the education and resources to choose not to have children. Children happen as a result of sex, which happens because they’re too poor to afford any other entertainment when the TV’s broke. They can’t even terminate an unwanted pregnancy, because of state laws that make it as difficult as possible for everyone, and nearly impossible if you don’t have the resources to play those silly games.
Stop saying that people choose something that in the circumstances can hardly be avoided. It isn’t true, it is more complicated than that, and it’s repetitious.
The system is there for the parasites. Capitalism, as it’s currently practised, is a system for making a very few people filthy rich. Because you can’t effectively make people negatively poor — not for long, anyway, before the system adjusts catastrophically — the only way to do this is to make a lot of people dirt poor, take everything away from them that can be taken.
If you want capitalism to work for all the people living under it, it must be moderated. Tax the rich, pay the poor; stop listening to lying gits who promise everything but give nothing, stop believing in riches solving everything, stop believing in the lies of individual improvement that say the rich got rich without anyone’s help and that only the poor are responsible for being poor. Filthy, dirty, shitty lies.
The rich have hoodwinked society into believing every single lie they tell to hold onto their riches; stop believing them. And stop repeating those lies.
What’s wrong with working in fast food? It’s hard work that provides a very useful service. I like to think that working any job for ten years straight is a meaningful contribution and should be afford someone a dignified existence. Where did we get this idea that some jobs are bad, and only certain types of work are worthy of respect?
Because if other people’s problems aren’t there own damn just desserts, then maybe my success isn’t necessarily just because I’m just so much better than everyone else. That’s what personal responsibility means, right?
My father picked cotton in the great depression. I make less than the lady in the documentary here. At present, none of my family have ever graduated from college. You should seriously give more credit to poor people. We can manage not having kids if we try, most times… even when the TV’s broke.
As birthrates decreased over the course of the recession (from, ahem, 2008 until now), that seems to indicate that some of the people you are complaining about acquired unexpected and ill-considered poverty rather than unexpected and ill-considered children. Life’s unpredictable–you might be poor today and rich tomorrow or rich today and poor etc etc. The window for reproduction is short. Criticizing people for not predicting the future is kind of cruel.
If there is ANYTHING that can convince Republicans to support a higher minimum wage is businesses telling people to get on welfare because they’re unwilling to pay them a decent wage.
James Sherk, senior policy analyst in labor economics at the Heritage Foundation, disagreed. He cited American Samoa’s increased minimum wage and decreased employment thereafter as an example of raising the minimum wage as poor policy. He said that an increase would benefit many teenagers and would not effectively reduce poverty. The poor are better off using food stamps and other public safety nets, he claimed.
but then
Sen. Murphy dismissed the American Samoa case as a bad analogy, and Sen. Sanders criticized Sherk and the Heritage Foundation for being hypocritical, as the conservative think tank calls for a huge reduction in food-stamp spending while Sherk was calling it a better alternative to poverty reduction.
I guess they want no minimum wage and no safety nets.
