Rise of Minimum wage?

[Juan_Bottom]

Player, your views of businesses and the economy are fundamentally flawed. Businesses provide a "reasonable wage" based on the skill level of the position and the value it brings to the company. "Reasonable wages" are NOT determined by the lifestyle the worker wants to live. You're trying to force the latter when reality runs on the former.

That's not true or slavery would never have existed. You're talking about the way that you want to believe things are. A fantasy.

[chang50]

Player, your views of businesses and the economy are fundamentally flawed. Businesses provide a "reasonable wage" based on the skill level of the position and the value it brings to the company. "Reasonable wages" are NOT determined by the lifestyle the worker wants to live. You're trying to force the latter when reality runs on the former.

Lol.In my experience companies pay the minimum required to recruit and retain,if they paid more they would put themselves at a competitive disadvantage,and eventually out of business.Reasonableness has FA to do with capitalism..

[PLAYER57832]

Player, your views of businesses and the economy are fundamentally flawed. Businesses provide a "reasonable wage" based on the skill level of the position and the value it brings to the company. "Reasonable wages" are NOT determined by the lifestyle the worker wants to live. You're trying to force the latter when reality runs on the former.

If my "ideas" are fundamentally flawed, it is because you begin with a base of no morality.

You can try all you want to justify the idea that its perfectly OK to hire someone who cannot feed, cloth and house themselves for the fulltime wage. Even indentured servants were supposed to gain more than that. You prove the point that love of money is the root of all evil. Note, its not money that is the root, its the LOVE of money.. putting esoteric financial gain above humanity, using it to justify any harm.

Your ideas are the ones that are abyssmal, not mine.

The part of your scenario that you forget is that there is no guarantee that ANY business "must" succeed. If you cannot do business without causing serious damage to those around, if you cannot pay your workers without depending on government handouts to pick up your slack, then you don't deserve to be in business. Profit comes AFTER paying your debts. Paying workers enough to live is a very basic fundamental requirement. The ONLY exceptions are truly disabled individuals who are not doing a real, full job and a limited training period for kids -- who also are not doing a full job. Once they begin to work fully for the hours they work, they, too deserve to be paid (though part-time work is OK).

[PLAYER57832]

Player, your views of businesses and the economy are fundamentally flawed. Businesses provide a "reasonable wage" based on the skill level of the position and the value it brings to the company. "Reasonable wages" are NOT determined by the lifestyle the worker wants to live. You're trying to force the latter when reality runs on the former.

Lol.In my experience companies pay the minimum required to recruit and retain,if they paid more they would put themselves at a competitive disadvantage,and eventually out of business.Reasonableness has FA to do with capitalism..

Ah, but you are forgetting the Nightstrike, BBS fundamental.. it is BUSINESS that has all the fundamental rights, humans are just worthless peons that have to take whatever business thinks they deserve.


Funny how similar those ideas are to the old monarchial ideas of who deserves to have what they have.

[Night Strike]

Lol.In my experience companies pay the minimum required to recruit and retain,if they paid more they would put themselves at a competitive disadvantage,and eventually out of business.Reasonableness has FA to do with capitalism..

But it's okay for the government to force them to pay more to put them at a competitive disadvantage?

That's not true or slavery would never have existed. You're talking about the way that you want to believe things are. A fantasy.

Slavery is a completely different situation.....namely that the slave did not have the choice to leave his work.

You can try all you want to justify the idea that its perfectly OK to hire someone who cannot feed, cloth and house themselves for the fulltime wage. Even indentured servants were supposed to gain more than that. You prove the point that love of money is the root of all evil. Note, its not money that is the root, its the LOVE of money.. putting esoteric financial gain above humanity, using it to justify any harm.

But the people who use the government to force them to get paid well beyond their skill level or position aren't being greedy and loving money? Poor people can be just as greedy as rich people....you just fail to understand that in the midst of your hate of rich people.

The part of your scenario that you forget is that there is no guarantee that ANY business "must" succeed. If you cannot do business without causing serious damage to those around, if you cannot pay your workers without depending on government handouts to pick up your slack, then you don't deserve to be in business.

I agree, so stop bailing out businesses when they fail and stop giving governmental handouts to people who are working and to people who have been unemployed for more than 6 months. Governmental handouts create the environment that allows businesses to pay employees less. If you cut out the dependency on government, people will have to actually decide how to better themselves rather than just wait for a check from the government.

[PLAYER57832]

Lol.In my experience companies pay the minimum required to recruit and retain,if they paid more they would put themselves at a competitive disadvantage,and eventually out of business.Reasonableness has FA to do with capitalism..

But it's okay for the government to force them to pay more to put them at a competitive disadvantage?

Its OK for the government to force business to be responsible and its up to business to find out how to do that while making a profit. Its not up to government to determine if any protection measure is profitable before requiring it, except in the extremes.

That's not true or slavery would never have existed. You're talking about the way that you want to believe things are. A fantasy.

Slavery is a completely different situation.....namely that the slave did not have the choice to leave his work.

and in your world, neither would workers, because as long as there is ANY job available, then leaving is a "choice" -- even if that job means they work and still starve or accept government handouts.

You can try all you want to justify the idea that its perfectly OK to hire someone who cannot feed, cloth and house themselves for the fulltime wage. Even indentured servants were supposed to gain more than that. You prove the point that love of money is the root of all evil. Note, its not money that is the root, its the LOVE of money.. putting esoteric financial gain above humanity, using it to justify any harm.

But the people who use the government to force them to get paid well beyond their skill level or position aren't being greedy and loving money?

Since according to you people who want to eat, have clothes and have a reasonable shelter overhead whiel working fulltime are "just greedy", then yes,

by-teh-way, no one is truly "forcing" business to pay anyone anything. They can do without, they can do the work themselves or just change business. The mandate is that if they want to hire someone, they have to pay them decently.. and that is a mandate that I will stand by, just like I stand by rules that don't allow kids to be killed in grain silos, or people to be hurt and killed operating dangerous machinery without gaurds, etc.

You ideas bear no merit at all.

The part of your scenario that you forget is that there is no guarantee that ANY business "must" succeed. If you cannot do business without causing serious damage to those around, if you cannot pay your workers without depending on government handouts to pick up your slack, then you don't deserve to be in business.

I agree, so stop bailing out businesses when they fail and stop giving governmental handouts to people who are working and to people who have been unemployed for more than 6 months. Governmental handouts create the environment that allows businesses to pay employees less. If you cut out the dependency on government, people will have to actually decide how to better themselves rather than just wait for a check from the government.

You are truly a piece of work.

Actually, no you make it plain you don't really understand the real work world or what it is like to exist on a regular salary at all.

[Night Strike]

by-teh-way, no one is truly "forcing" business to pay anyone anything. They can do without, they can do the work themselves or just change business. The mandate is that if they want to hire someone, they have to pay them decently.. and that is a mandate that I will stand by, just like I stand by rules that don't allow kids to be killed in grain silos, or people to be hurt and killed operating dangerous machinery without gaurds, etc.

No one is truly "forcing" anyone to work at a particular business. They can do without or they can work for themselves to make their own business. The truth is that they can't start at a job and then use the government to demand that they get raises when their position does nothing to warrant raises and does not add enough value to the company to demand such pay rates.

Actually, no you make it plain you don't really understand the real work world or what it is like to exist on a regular salary at all.

Actually, I know that working for minimum wage sucked and that I only did it to help make ends meet while I was doing actual work to better myself to move up to a higher paying job. Minimum wage jobs were never designed to be a way of life....they're designed for entry-level positions to get people started in the world. It's pretty clear that you don't understand how businesses work and will just use the government to mandate that someone else provide everything you want, consequences be damned.

[Nobunaga]

A good article on minimum wage, showing the Earned Income Tax Credit as a much better target for adjustment if anybody truly wants to help the poor.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-0 ... -wage.html

"Liberal arguments for increasing the minimum wage have a fundamental flaw: They restrict the set of policy choices to either a minimum wage increase or doing nothing."

"Democrats who want to address income inequality would be much better served by increasing the EITC rather than the minimum wage. "

Anybody want to change the thread title to "Rise of EITC"?

[stahrgazer]

Its not up to government to determine if any protection measure is profitable before requiring it, except in the extremes.

Oh, yes it is up to the government to evaluate protective measures before establishing them!

Any government who'd callously and carelessly establish ridiculous measures that would bankrupt its people deserves to be overthrown, because part of "protection" needs to be doing its best to ensure ALL remain reasonably functionary.

I agree with Nobunga: increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit is a much better way to help the poor than raising the minimum wage which just increases prices across the board so that the middle class is squeezed more than before.

[PLAYER57832]

Its not up to government to determine if any protection measure is profitable before requiring it, except in the extremes.

Oh, yes it is up to the government to evaluate protective measures before establishing them!

Any government who'd callously and carelessly establish ridiculous measures that would bankrupt its people deserves to be overthrown, because part of "protection" needs to be doing its best to ensure ALL remain reasonably functionary.

Yes, I was being short. The people who work within government certainly need to take all impacts, including the impact to business profit into account when possible.

This in no way, shape or form precludes that the current minimum wage is just too low. Sure, businesses will cry "too much" -- all the way to the bank. Most of the arguments Nightstrike, etc voice against it are based on rhetoric not facts. Or based on short term projections that they want to pretend are facts.

The fact is that paying people less than it takes them to live is a drain on society, not a boon. Pretending that companies doing so can make a profit, are making a profit is just unrealistic except in very specific circumstances such as hiring the disabled or convicts, etc.

The problem is when science overrides, such as in many pollution issues. Allowing "accomodation" for business is why we may soon not have effective bee populations and why we have such terrible water policies that mean future generations will fight over water more intensely than we are now fighting over oil, and with far more disasterous results. However, that is off topic and not related to the minimum wage issue directly.

I agree with Nobunga: increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit is a much better way to help the poor than raising the minimum wage which just increases prices across the board so that the middle class is squeezed more than before.

And here I thought we were supposed to be AGAINST government subsidies!

The minimum wage needs to be set so that a person working fulltime (35 hours or more, whether in one job or multiple jobs) can support themselves, better support themselves and one child. Anything lower, including offering some kind of earned income credit is just allowing business to pretend that they are giving a real wage when they are really just demanding subsidies for their workers so they can stay in business.

Workers should be paying taxes. I am not necessarily in favor of even keeping the child credits for people having more than a few kids, but subsidies may be the lessor of poor choices.

Increasing wages mean more taxes paid, fewer tax dollars out and more purchases by wage earners. Historically, increasing the minimum wage tends to boost everyone. The losses are short term (gone in 2 years). In this environment, most businesses have already cut. Some businesses will fail, sure, but they are businesses that were not doing well already and were most likely going to fail.


Above all else, this puts income on an honest front. Today, most people have no idea how many working people are getting subsidies. They talk of "welfare deadbeats", which are a problem, but forget about the numbers of working folk who cannot pay rent, childcare or food without assistance. Offering a low income tax break just shifts the burden from work to taxes. Taxes are not supposed to provide wages for people who work, and that is what those tax breaks and subsidies do.. provide wages, but from tax dollars instead of business profits.

[Night Strike]

Increasing wages mean more taxes paid, fewer tax dollars out and more purchases by wage earners. Historically, increasing the minimum wage tends to boost everyone. The losses are short term (gone in 2 years). In this environment, most businesses have already cut. Some businesses will fail, sure, but they are businesses that were not doing well already and were most likely going to fail.

Only if those wage increases are due to merit or longevity, not if they're due to artificial price floors set by the government. How can you purchase more when the prices for the things you buy also go up because the wages are artificially increased? Furthermore, you punish all the people who are earning wages inbetween the two minimum wage rates and those who are barely above the new rate because you raise prices on what they buy but they get minimal or no wage increases. Plus the fact that you're now paying a new hire the same rate as someone who has been there for potentially several years.

By the way, why the eagerness to cause businesses to fail? Isn't an open business that's barely hanging on better than one that fails and closes? Especially when the only difference between the two is artificially imposed governmental regulations? Also, increasing the minimum wage just makes it that much harder for a business to recover because it raises the costs of hiring a temporary worker who may be able to put them back in the good.

[BigBallinStalin]

Player, your views of businesses and the economy are fundamentally flawed. Businesses provide a "reasonable wage" based on the skill level of the position and the value it brings to the company. "Reasonable wages" are NOT determined by the lifestyle the worker wants to live. You're trying to force the latter when reality runs on the former.

That's not true or slavery would never have existed.

[BigBallinStalin]

Player, your views of businesses and the economy are fundamentally flawed. Businesses provide a "reasonable wage" based on the skill level of the position and the value it brings to the company. "Reasonable wages" are NOT determined by the lifestyle the worker wants to live. You're trying to force the latter when reality runs on the former.

If my "ideas" are fundamentally flawed, it is because you begin with a base of no morality.

Oh, in other words, "I'm not wrong because you have no morals."

Great reasoning. Got any other gems for us?

[ooge]

Are we a consumer based economy? Yes. Then the more money consumers have the better economy does.You could have the best product in the world but if no one can afford it your business will fail.Henry Ford gave his workers a unheard of at the time wage increase with the intention that they would be able to buy the product they were making,This was successful.

[keiths31]

Are we a consumer based economy? Yes. Then the more money consumers have the better economy does.You could have the best product in the world but if no one can afford it your business will fail.Henry Ford gave his workers a unheard of at the time wage increase with the intention that they would be able to buy the product they were making,This was successful.

For big business yes. For small business not so much.

[BigBallinStalin]

Are we a consumer based economy? Yes. Then the more money consumers have the better economy does.You could have the best product in the world but if no one can afford it your business will fail.Henry Ford gave his workers a unheard of at the time wage increase with the intention that they would be able to buy the product they were making,This was successful.

More money doesn't make us better or the economy better. If we all had double the amount of money, then (basically) we'd get double the inflation. All that money chasing the same amount of goods would wreak havoc on the economy.

What matters is the prices of goods (money, cars, factories, education, etc.), what people are willing to exchange for them (in short, voluntary exchange).

So, if the productivity of the workers at Ford are actually worth the wage increase, then this is fine. If some external organization (the government) imposes those wage increases, then this isn't fine. The government doesn't really care about the consequences of its policies, it lacks the incentive to readjust the problem it creates, and it lacks the local knowledge for making informed decisions over 300+ million people.

[Night Strike]

Are we a consumer based economy? Yes. Then the more money consumers have the better economy does.You could have the best product in the world but if no one can afford it your business will fail.Henry Ford gave his workers a unheard of at the time wage increase with the intention that they would be able to buy the product they were making,This was successful.

Private sector choices versus governmental mandates. BIG difference between the two; please understand the difference.

[PLAYER57832]

Are we a consumer based economy? Yes. Then the more money consumers have the better economy does.You could have the best product in the world but if no one can afford it your business will fail.Henry Ford gave his workers a unheard of at the time wage increase with the intention that they would be able to buy the product they were making,This was successful.

Private sector choices versus governmental mandates. BIG difference between the two; please understand the difference.

Yes... government mandates are about providing things the ELECTED representatives of the public want. Private sector choices are almost entirely about making a few people as much money as possible, and generally have nothing at all to do with what benefits society or people as a whole.

[PLAYER57832]

by-teh-way, no one is truly "forcing" business to pay anyone anything. They can do without, they can do the work themselves or just change business. The mandate is that if they want to hire someone, they have to pay them decently.. and that is a mandate that I will stand by, just like I stand by rules that don't allow kids to be killed in grain silos, or people to be hurt and killed operating dangerous machinery without gaurds, etc.

No one is truly "forcing" anyone to work at a particular business. They can do without or they can work for themselves to make their own business. The truth is that they can't start at a job and then use the government to demand that they get raises when their position does nothing to warrant raises and does not add enough value to the company to demand such pay rates.
.

What you are really saying is the only one set of skills, one mindset is valuable to society. Running a business is a skill. BUT, it is not the only skill society needs, nor are the judgements of those with those skills the only ones of value to society.

You want a society that is all about making money. Guess what, we had such a society... it lead to the Depression, first the mini one (brought on partially by gold hoarding around the turn of the century) and then by the Great Depression.

This last debacle, though you like to deny it, is ALSO about excesses of private individuals who were not regulated. The Depression was exacerbated by a failure to recognize environmental damage. In that time, it was to a large extent pure ignorance. However, we face a similar issue with water now... and we are no longer truly ignorant. However, no knowledge matters if people won't pay attention. You deny that the climate is changing, though there has never been such a wide scientific consensus about ANYTHING as that issue. We are facing serious water over withdrawels and allowing frackers and oil companies to each pollute water in ways we do not have the technology to correct.

I suggest we pay attention to those things, part of it is ensuring that people are fed, educated and knowledgeable enough to find whatever solutions might exist. Your "answer" is to promote whomever is making the most money.

Sorry, but money never has and never will be a measure of either intelligence, science or sense.

[PLAYER57832]

Are we a consumer based economy? Yes. Then the more money consumers have the better economy does.You could have the best product in the world but if no one can afford it your business will fail.Henry Ford gave his workers a unheard of at the time wage increase with the intention that they would be able to buy the product they were making,This was successful.

More money doesn't make us better or the economy better. If we all had double the amount of money, then (basically) we'd get double the inflation. All that money chasing the same amount of goods would wreak havoc on the economy.

What matters is the prices of goods (money, cars, factories, education, etc.), what people are willing to exchange for them (in short, voluntary exchange).

So, if the productivity of the workers at Ford are actually worth the wage increase, then this is fine. If some external organization (the government) imposes those wage increases, then this isn't fine. The government doesn't really care about the consequences of its policies, it lacks the incentive to readjust the problem it creates, and it lacks the local knowledge for making informed decisions over 300+ million people.

Nice theories.

here is reality:

Link: http://www.npr.org/2013/04/10/176677299 ... pay-dearly

Just how cheap is the cheap labor in Texas? Sometimes, it's free. Guillermo Perez, 41, is undocumented and has been working commercial construction jobs in Austin for 13 years.
"[The employer] said he didn't have the money to pay me and he owed me $1,200," Perez says of one job. "I told him that I'm going to the Texas Workforce Commission, which I did. Then after that, he came back two weeks later and paid me."
Perez is brave. Undocumented workers are usually too afraid to complain to Texas authorities, even when they go home with empty pockets. And they almost never talk to reporters.
Widespread Wage Theft
The economic collapse of 2008 brought with it an onslaught of wage theft, according to the Austin-based Workers Defense Project. At the end of the week, construction workers sometimes walk away with $4 or $5 an hour, sometimes less, sometimes nothing.
"Ninety percent of the people who come to our organization have come because they've been robbed of their wages," says Cristina Tzintzun, the Workers Defense Project executive director.
The organization has co-authored a report with the University of Texas, Austin, that examines working conditions in the Texas construction industry. For more than a year, WDP staff and University of Texas faculty canvassed Texas construction sites, surveying hundreds of workers and gathering information about pay, benefits, working conditions and employment and residency status.
Cheated workers keep working, Tzintzun says, because contractors dangle wages like bait from one week to another, paying just enough to keep everybody on the hook.

Enlarge image i
Two workers died when a crane collapsed under windy conditions at a University of Texas, Dallas, campus site in July 2012. OSHA cited the construction company with six serious safety violations and levied a $30,000 penalty.
Jack White/Courtesy of The Dallas Morning News

Two workers died when a crane collapsed under windy conditions at a University of Texas, Dallas, campus site in July 2012. OSHA cited the construction company with six serious safety violations and levied a $30,000 penalty.
Jack White/Courtesy of The Dallas Morning News "We're talking large commercial projects, even state and county projects," she says. "So it's a problem that's widespread in the industry."
If wage theft is a nasty cousin of slavery, Tzintzun says there's a deeper, more fundamental sickness affecting the Texas construction industry: the misclassification of construction workers as independent contractors instead of as employees.
"We found that 41 percent of construction workers, regardless of immigration status, were misclassified as subcontractors," she says.
It works like this: Pretend you're an interior contractor, drop by the Home Depot parking lot and pick up four Hispanic guys to install Sheetrock for $8 an hour.
By law, these men are your employees, even if just for the day. But in Texas, as in many other states, it's popular to pretend they're each independent contractors — business owners. Which means you are not paying for their labor but for their business services.
With this arrangement, the contractor — you — don't have to pay Social Security taxes or payroll taxes or workers' compensation or overtime. Instead, you pretend the undocumented Hispanic worker you've just paid in cash is going to pay all those state and federal taxes out of his $8 an hour himself.
"Our estimation is that there's $1.6 billion being lost in federal income taxes just from Texas alone," says the Workers Defense Project's Tzintzun. The report estimates that $7 billion in wages from nearly 400,000 illegally classified construction workers is going unreported in Texas each year, resulting in billions of dollars in revenue lost owing to institutionalized statewide payroll fraud.
"It's really the Wild West out there," Tzintzun says.
A Dangerous State For A Dangerous Industry
Making a dangerous but profitable living has long been part of the Texas ethos. Handsomely paid and heavily mustached Texas Rangers died atop their horses chasing bandits and Comanches; since 1901, so-called roughnecks flush with cash have lost their fingers, and sometimes their lives, working Texas oil rigs.
But working Texas construction is a good way to die while not making a good living. More construction workers die in Texas than in any other state, the WDP-UT study finds. With 10.7 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2010, construction workers in the lightly regulated Lone Star State died at twice the rate as those in California, with a rate of 5.2. That's compared with the U.S. rate of 8.8 in that same year.
Take the story of 48-year-old Angel Hurtado, an undocumented roofer who died at an Austin warehouse site that had fallen behind schedule. He plummeted 20 feet to a concrete floor, hitting his head on a girder as he fell.
Standing on the back road in the upscale Austin suburb of West Lake Hills where his father died, Angel's son Christian grows quiet and sad. His mother was also working at the site that day and saw her husband fall. She cradled his broken head in her lap, hysterical with grief.
When Christian arrived, the subcontractor took him aside and promised to pay for his father's funeral, Christian says. "The next day, we never see this guy. He never pick up the phone. We never hear anything from him, and he never called us back."
According to the study, 1 in every 5 Texas construction workers will require hospitalization because of injuries on the job. Texas is the only state in the nation without mandatory workers' compensation, meaning hospitals and taxpayers usually end up shouldering the cost when uncovered construction workers are hurt.
And who profits from the system in Texas? Remember that five-bedroom house for $160,000? Customers are the winners, workers are the losers and many construction firm owners have been transformed into the exploiters.
That's not the case for all construction firms, of course. But for many smaller contractors and subcontractors — who together make up the majority of the industry here — it's exploit your workers and cheat the taxpayers or go out of business. Those are the cold hard Texas construction industry facts.

You can pretend all you want that the "market" will work all this out, but your claims are refuted by evidence over and over and over again.

Markets were a great improvement and alternative to monarchies, but using the ideas of a market economy, as you do, as if it were some kind of insalable religion is just stupidity. Markets don't really and truly create better products. They can allow new products to spread, but once the products are no longer new, then the rush is to make them cheaper... and that, eventually always leads to cutting corners one way or another. You can try to find exceptions, but they don't exist, except in the very short term or small niches.

[Night Strike]

Are we a consumer based economy? Yes. Then the more money consumers have the better economy does.You could have the best product in the world but if no one can afford it your business will fail.Henry Ford gave his workers a unheard of at the time wage increase with the intention that they would be able to buy the product they were making,This was successful.

Private sector choices versus governmental mandates. BIG difference between the two; please understand the difference.

Yes... government mandates are about providing things the ELECTED representatives of the public want. Private sector choices are almost entirely about making a few people as much money as possible, and generally have nothing at all to do with what benefits society or people as a whole.

And those people get elected because they make continual promises to provide handouts using other people's money. You forget about the whole point of the private sector: people get to choose for themselves what they want and how to accomplish it. By people choosing to benefit themselves, that benefits the society. Instead, because we have governmental dependency, people choose to leach off the promise of free stuff from the government, which only brings our society down, as we see today. We don't want a planned, central economy just because the elected elites think it's beneficial.

What you are really saying is the only one set of skills, one mindset is valuable to society. Running a business is a skill. BUT, it is not the only skill society needs, nor are the judgements of those with those skills the only ones of value to society.

Nope. People who don't have the skills to run a business can work for other people who need those skills. It's not the government's job to provide an income to people who don't learn the skills necessary to find a job or start their own.

You want a society that is all about making money.

No, I want a society where people can provide from themselves instead of using the government to reallocate it to themselves. Why do you think people who don't work have a right to take money from people who do work?

[Night Strike]

You can pretend all you want that the "market" will work all this out, but your claims are refuted by evidence over and over and over again.

Markets were a great improvement and alternative to monarchies, but using the ideas of a market economy, as you do, as if it were some kind of insalable religion is just stupidity. Markets don't really and truly create better products. They can allow new products to spread, but once the products are no longer new, then the rush is to make them cheaper... and that, eventually always leads to cutting corners one way or another. You can try to find exceptions, but they don't exist, except in the very short term or small niches.

We already have laws that are supposed to ban employers from hiring illegal workers. Why aren't those being enforced? Why would you rather pass new laws than enforce the ones that are currently on the books?

[PLAYER57832]

Are we a consumer based economy? Yes. Then the more money consumers have the better economy does.You could have the best product in the world but if no one can afford it your business will fail.Henry Ford gave his workers a unheard of at the time wage increase with the intention that they would be able to buy the product they were making,This was successful.

Private sector choices versus governmental mandates. BIG difference between the two; please understand the difference.

Yes... government mandates are about providing things the ELECTED representatives of the public want. Private sector choices are almost entirely about making a few people as much money as possible, and generally have nothing at all to do with what benefits society or people as a whole.

And those people get elected because they make continual promises to provide handouts using other people's money. You forget about the whole point of the private sector: people get to choose for themselves what they want and how to accomplish it. By people choosing to benefit themselves, that benefits the society. Instead, because we have governmental dependency, people choose to leach off the promise of free stuff from the government, which only brings our society down, as we see today. We don't want a planned, central economy just because the elected elites think it's beneficial.

Oh bull... you think that someone having a lot of money means they have the automatic right to decide what is correct in society. I say EVERYONE has the right to decide... and sometimes that does mean telling big bullies that "sorry, you DO have to pay attention to other people's rights1".

And stop acting like the choice is free market versus planned economy. What we have now is a big business planned economy. Its the worst of all worlds.

The private sector does some things wonderfully. You want a new tennis shoe, a better shirt or even a great flavor of ice cream.. the market can probably get you there. The market, however never has and never will find cures for malaria, cancer, provide national parks like we can all enjoy, protect the vast forest resources our country has, or even do a decent job of providing long term agriculture, roads, education.

AND, ultimately, while the market did a good job of providing us all with nice refridgerators, it has also created a throw-away society that depends on continual abuse and waste to survive.

What you are really saying is the only one set of skills, one mindset is valuable to society. Running a business is a skill. BUT, it is not the only skill society needs, nor are the judgements of those with those skills the only ones of value to society.

Nope. People who don't have the skills to run a business can work for other people who need those skills. It's not the government's job to provide an income to people who don't learn the skills necessary to find a job or start their own.

Yeah, you missed the point entirely.
Just because you can run a business does not make you suddenly God or suddenly more capable of deciding what is best for the country as a whole. It makes you good at making a buck, running your business. I can point to many very, very skilled people who are horrible at managing business.

I can point to plenty of people who are good at running business, but not at managing their personal lives or anything else outside of business.

The problem with ideology like yours is that you don't bother to stop and look at the impact of what you claim you want. We have plenty of examples.... the time prior to the Depressions, even this past debacle. ALL of them came about because too much power was given to a few people who have a lot of money, and who thought having that money gave them the right and moral imperitive to make decisions for everyone else.

You want a society that is all about making money.

No, I want a society where people can provide from themselves instead of using the government to reallocate it to themselves. Why do you think people who don't work have a right to take money from people who do work?

I know you believe that is what you want. Unfortunately, you ignore history and any data that contradicts your world view.

Its like the socialized medicine thread, back when you started it. Your whole argument was Obama care is socialized medicine and socialized medicine is bad. You ignored any and all evidence from countries that actually have such systems, except for the worst case scenarios and pretended that nothing bad happens in our system that would not magically be fixed by imaginary free market solutions that have never worked in health care.

Here, you pretend that the Depression never happened, that the S & L crisis never happened, that the mortgage debacle was just about poor people taking on more mortgage than they could afford. NO responsibility at all to the banks or the greed that made so many invest in securities they could not understand because they gave a good return.

[PLAYER57832]

You can pretend all you want that the "market" will work all this out, but your claims are refuted by evidence over and over and over again.

Markets were a great improvement and alternative to monarchies, but using the ideas of a market economy, as you do, as if it were some kind of insalable religion is just stupidity. Markets don't really and truly create better products. They can allow new products to spread, but once the products are no longer new, then the rush is to make them cheaper... and that, eventually always leads to cutting corners one way or another. You can try to find exceptions, but they don't exist, except in the very short term or small niches.

We already have laws that are supposed to ban employers from hiring illegal workers. Why aren't those being enforced? Why would you rather pass new laws than enforce the ones that are currently on the books?

MONEY.


Plain and simply, money and the "free market" which you tout so highly

Among other issues, enforcing means having more government folks to do the enforcing and seems like the idea that just reducing government and having fewer laws has been pretty popular in places like Texas... and with you, for that matter.
Also, enforcement means that people have to be willing and ABLE to complain. Illegal aliens cannot complain... they will simply be deported, which gets us back to why the AFL-CIO has begun supporting legalizing illegal workers. ALSO, not everyone so treated is illegal.

A LOT of what is going on is actually perfectly legal. There is nothing illegal about paying someone $8.00 an hour to do a dangerous job. Texas does not require worker compensation. Safety rules exist, but have to be enforced and Texas has notoriously poor rules to begin with even when they are enforced.

or, for some more details, here:
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/10/176677299 ... any-worker

The important point is that competition forces even those companies that want very much to do what is right to cut the same corners if they want to stay in business. The free market is just a race to the bottom. That is why government mandates are necessary to set minimum wages, to set safety standards and so forth. But.. according to you, none of that is necessary.

[Night Strike]

Actually, the marketplace had nearly eradicated malaria until the government banned the treatment. And I'm thinking the cure for polio was discovered by the private market. The government recognizes national parks.....except now they've grossly expanded that use to block our country from becoming energy independent and to keep land out of the control of the state governments. Private businesses that rely on natural resources such as trees will make sure to take care of them because otherwise their source of income will disappear.

Being a politician doesn't make a person God either, so why do you keep treating their words and policies as such?

And yet again, we look at the previous debacle of the housing bubble and realize that it was also due to governmental involvement. The government said the banks were being racist by not loaning money to people who were too risky, so the government bought up all that risk so the private market wouldn't have to take on that risk (which is a foundation of economics). And they continued that same policy of removing risk by bailing out the banks, car companies, and installing Dodd-Frank which provides for a permanent bailout opportunity. Government involvement in the free market is what is causing so many of our problems (the rest are caused by the government losing a trillion dollars every year).