Re: You have two thoughts in conflict, how do you pick a winner?

On Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:17:40 -0800, Bill Pfeifer <billpfeifer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Keynes wrote:

On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 17:15:53 -0800, Bill Pfeifer <billpfeifer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Déjà Flu wrote:

If you kids don't stop teasing each other, I'm
gonna tie you together and put you on national
television.

Oh, wait...it's election year...no action required.
Cancel the pizza order.

"The federal minimum wage is $5.85 an hour! Can you
imagine working over an hour for a fucking chicken sandwich?

If your job skills are worth more than $5.85 an hour,
you should find a job that pays what you are worth.
But if your job skills are worth less than $5.85 an hour,
you are prohibited by federal law from working at all.
That's what minimum wage means.
It neatly prevents teenagers from learning a skill.


What is labor worth, absent government intervention?
It's worth the cost of a living, including children and an
unpaid wife to civilize them. (Only if we want a civilized
society of course. We can opt for gangland lord of the flies,
where the blind lead their blind peers. But there is no future in that)

If labor can't recieve a living wage and become an integral
part of society, there can be no survival of labor or of society.

The excesses of capitalism led the government to aid, really
to subsidize, poverty. They say if you subsidize something,
you'll get more and more of it. As it is, the working poor can't
afford to live without government transfer payments for food,
shelter, energy, and health care.

They are Not making a living wage. Who profits from this?
Employers and consumers. Their prices are reduced since
labor is not paid for directly. But that also means that those
who make more than a living, who have an excess, a surplus,
are required to pay taxes to support the government subsidies.

This seems unfair to the affluent. They sincerely want to get,
and never to give anything. That would be 'theft' or 'communism'
or some other worse than sexual perversion.

It might have been better if the FDR government never intervened from
a practical point of view. Then labor today would be priced according
to it's actual value, which is basically subsistence, and not a penny
lower
than that. But if FDR had not intervened, many of our ancestors would
have been eaten alive by the exploited masses ready to rebel during the
collapse of capitalism, called the great depression.

But now we have the dependent and the independent, both selfishly
at odds. If we can't come together, what will become of us?

If you are running a business, and you need help, would you hire
someone who contributes less than he costs (including wages, taxes,
benefits, etc, etc)? If you do, you would not stay in business for long.

A long time ago, I worked at a TV repair shop in Hollywood.
In came a guy who had just graduated with high marks from some
technical institute, looking for a job a TV technician.
After he was rejected, the boss explained to me what he told him.
"You have great potential, but unfortunately no experience.
If I hire you, I have to pay you minimum wage, but because of your
lack of experience you cannot earn me that much now. So if I hire
you, I will lose money until you gain the necessary experience, which
could take many months. The only way I could recoup that loss is to
pay you less than what you work is worth for some time after that.
But both you and I know that If I were to do that, you would leave
immediately for another job, leaving me with the loss.
So, as much as I regret it, sorry......"

For untrained teens trying to enter the job market, the minimum wage
is an insurmountable barrier, preventing them from acquiring job skills
that would eventually qualify them for much higher paying jobs.

From a 1998 article:
The bias of minimum wage laws against disadvantaged minorities has been
conspicuous ever since 1956, when the minimum wage shot up from 75 cents to
$1.00 an hour. During the next two years, nonwhite teenage unemployment
spiralled from 14 to 24 percent. The recent 1996 hike in the minimum wage
to $5.15 an hour had a similar effect: unemployment among black male
teenagers jumped from 37 to 41 percent almost immediately, at a time when
the economy was doing well for almost everyone else. That?s why Milton
Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, once called the minimum
wage "the most anti-black law on the books."


Milton Friedman was (excuse the expression) an ***.
The Chicago school of economics was thoroughly corrupt.
"Free to Choose" assumes the big lie that all negotiations
are between equals. Can anything be more untrue than that?
Friedman and his ilk made the Reagan Devolution sound
practical. But has it turned out that way?

I actually worked for min wage back in
(lemme see. Gotta figure this out.) 1963-6
On that wage I had a car, an apartment and
a non-working wife. I had money left over
for wine and musical instruments. Back in
the 50's and 60's taxes were progressive and
quite a bit heavier than now, both on the wealthy
and on corporations. (They were smaller then,
and there were many more of them.)

Eisenhower's farewell address warned us of the shape
of things to come, namely the military-industrial-complex,
and government of the corporations, by the corporations,
and for the corporations.

What you say is perhaps a consequence of the
current situation. But is doesn't address the
actual true cost of labor, which is subsistence
and not a penny less than that. Dead labor gets
nothing done, stinks, and clutters up the streets.
Then who will remove them? Paris Hilton?

The US economy is terribly screwed up. We have
affluence and princely infrastructure (until recently).
Who's on the government dole? Policemen, firemen,
teachers, munitions workers, road builders, bridge
builders, architects, construction workers, soldiers,
agriculture, public park maintenance workers, all the
dept's in DC alphabet land, and on and on and on.
Then there are the restaurants and gas stations,
tax preparers and dog walkers that serve all the
government workers.

Probably half of the economy is based on public works,
the sort of things that private money interests have no
interest in doing or having done. (Although they will
jump at the chance to piratize - er - Enronize - er - privatize
a government function on a no-bid no-accountability basis.
But then they are also dead beats sucking on the gov't tit.
Respectable Rich ones though, not poor ones.)

So the USA is already a socialist state that has fantastic
services and infrastructure, and so a high standard of living.
That is both our overhead, and our bread and butter. We
can't go on without it. Yet less developed, low income,
low tax countries are now our competitors, using our
own exported factories, methods and expertise. There's
no way we can compete in such a world market.
What were they thinking?

Who sets wages anymore? It isn't supply and demand.
There is no shortage of candidates for multimillion $
CEO jobs. In fact, I'm open to any offers that don't
insult my very, very, very expensive tastes.


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