Re: WGA Strike 90%+ vote to strike

On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:11:26 -0500, "Dennis \(Icarus\)"
<ala_dir_diver@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:lmgnh3l8v2lnul121q6mlosp5khhuoo450@xxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 15:13:10 -0500, "Carl" <cengman7@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


<snip>

But they are NOT a tiny percentage of the workforce that works at
minimum wage.

Perhaps, but I wasn't talking about people who work at minimum wage.
You were the one who brought that up. I was talking about people who
earn poverty-level wages, like employees at Wal-Mart.

The minumum wage, being less than what Wal Mart pays, seems to fit your
definition of "poverty level wages".

Guess you didn't see the figures I posted from that web site. It seems
that Wal-Mart's wages are higher than the minimum, but they still put
some employees below the poverty line, and others only slight above
it.

Would you trust GWB and the Republicans to run your health care?
:-)

You have a point . . .

Seriously, I'm not wild about government care. But having no
insurance, or having managed care or one of these phony individual
insurance plans that drop you when you become seriously ill is worse.


How about the US electronics
industry?

Make everyone pay more and more for everything and people will buy
less and less of it. You'll have wonderfully paid employees for a short
time,
until they get laid off.

Great business model.

For which you can thank the Republicans and their support for
unbridled globalization. American factory worker earning $20 an hour
competes with Chinese factory worker earning 15 cents an hour. Result:
American factory closes. Great business model.


So what would you like? Embargo? Tariffs?

Tariffs would I think be the way to go. But I suspect we wouldn't even
have to go that far (and it would take some doing to get there, since
they'd probably be illegal under current agreements). Right now, the
Asian countries are manipulating their currencies, dumping, engaging
in protectionism, stealing our intellectual property. I'd tell them
that if they didn't clean up their act they'd face tariffs. I'd repeal
tax incentives that encourage companies to move factories overseas.
And I'd require that foreign companies meet basic labor and
environmental standards. I suspect that those measures would be
enough. One doesn't want to go too far, to cause a depression or halt
the industrialization of the third world, which is in our interest as
well as theirs. The idea would be to move slowly and act
conservatively, and to bring the other industrialized countries --
with whom we should IMO have a common market free of impediments to
commerce -- along. Done correctly, there wouldn't be much by way of
actual tariffs, since the third world countries would find it in their
interest to comply.

--
Josh

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals.
We know now that it is bad economics." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

.

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