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Cisco CSO Says Antivirus Money "Completely Wasted"
mernil writes with an excerpt that kicks off a story at ZDNet Australia: "Companies are wasting money on security processes — such as applying patches and using antivirus software — which just don't work, according to Cisco's chief security officer John Stewart. Speaking at the AusCERT 2008 conference in the Gold Coast yesterday, Stewart said the malware industry is moving faster than the security industry, making it impossible for users to remain secure."
maybe if congress was making minimum wage something would be done about it until then nothing will happen
Minimum wage is a great idea when viewed shallowly. It'd be great if there was a standard of living that everyone who worked could be guaranteed--but that's not the case.
Having a minimum wage effectively sets a floor for goods and services. Prices for product which has a minimum wage employee in the chain of employees who work on that product can never cost less than (in America) $5.85 divided by the number of products that are touched by that person in an hour (this is an oversimplification, but the idea is sane.) If that minimum wage employee wants to purchase the product, his own wages increase the cost of that product.
It's easiest to see this when minimum wage is increased. When this happens, either the company has to accept lower profits (that's what the government would like you to believe will happen), they have to lay people off, or they have to increase the costs of their products (this is assuming that efficiency is as high as it can get--something the business should be striving for anyway.)
Frequently, you'll just see the costs increase. This means that the minimum wage earners don't see much of a real benefit to the wage increase, but it does help close the gap between the middle class and the lower class.
When it's feasible to do so, companies will lay off minimum wage workers to keep their profits the same (or even increase them, in a few cases) and just make everyone else work harder. This is especially true if the company has any sorts of benefits, and can get away with paying someone time-and-a-half overtime to pick up the slack. This is great for the people who get to keep their jobs--they get the extra wages plus the overtime--but it increases unemployment.
The economics of a minimum wage just do not make sense. We'd be better off mandating a standard of living and letting people pay extra to live above those means. At least the (ostensible) goal of Minimum Wage would be met, and we wouldn't have to deal with the inflation that accompanies it.
As an aside, a significant percentage (I've heard that it's a majority) of all minimum wage earners are in high school, earning spending money. This throws a wrench in the works of the above points--these kids aren't making a living off of minimum wage, but the cost increases still affect those making just above minimum wage.
I guess people cannot handle the truth of the matter and are unable to think collectively and realistically about coding and programming. I wonder who demodded my post down to troll level, because quite frankly it is 100% honest opinion. And is not troll worth the other 2 posts in reply to mine are 100% troll worthy. Think out side the box sheesh.
Most countries do a lot of things that are bad ideas. Our own country is one of them. "If France jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?"
But, to reiterate my other points, let's look info from the 2007 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
65% of workers earning minimum wage work part time. No matter how high the minimum wage is, you're not going to support yourself with part-time work.
Half of people earning minimum are under 25. These earners are largely comprised of people being supported by someone else (high school student living with parents, college students in parents' basement) who do not have families to support.
Food service provides the largest chunk of these minimum wage jobs. But, these jobs generally aren't "minimum wage" in that a lot of them are tipped positions.
22% are married. A minimum wage job is a secondary source of income.
I can't find my dead-tree source, but it had an older statistic on how many people are stuck earning minimum wage for more than 1 year (very few). The 2.3% of all workers who earn minimum wage are not the same people year after year.
Doing some quick math - 50% live with parents, 22% live with spouse. This is why minimum wage is a terrible way to "keep you from being homeless and starving" - at most this describes only 28% of minimum wage earners.
Minimum wage does not work. The overwhelming majority of people earning it are not impoverished. If the goal is to help prevent starvation, fixing the food stamps program would be a better use of our congresscritter's time.
Interesting tidbit: 3% of people without a high school diploma or GED earn minimum wage. 2% of people with a high school diploma earn minimum wage. 1% of people with a college diploma earn minimum. (I suspect these are English majors ^.^) If the college educated are three times less likely to earn minimum wage, maybe we could look at reforming our public education system and at further subsidization of student loans.
But, the point of my rant: Minimum wage does very little to help the impoverished. Better ways to fight poverty are improving education (which is harder than pulling a $number out of your arse!) and focus on programs that do help the poor.
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