But what if the proper cost of that pill actually is $100? (Or, for that matter, $1,000,000) Are you and I, by sole virtue of being citizens entitled to that life saving pill, regardless of the cost?
This is a struggle for me. It seems reasonable to me that there should be access to basic medical care for all citizens with as little standing in the way of this care as possible. No one should die from Dysentery in the United States. On the other hand, if Pyro_Peter's Nuclear Anti-cancer Medicines, Inc. spends $10,000 to make each Fermium Armed Genetically Tailored Smart Bomb Anti-Cancer Pill then I completely understand that if we want more FAGTSBAC Pills (*whew* that was close to being a really baaaad acronym) then Pyro_Peter's Nuke Pills, Inc. must charge more than $10,000 for that pill.
I think the tough part here is that the line for "reasonable access to basic care" is in different places for different societies. I'd also be concerned that the act of drawing that line would be sufficient force to prevent it from naturally rising with time. What if that line was drawn in the 1920's US? Where would medicine be today? Would we have some metric like the Consumer Price Index but for medical care to keep moving that line up?
Finally, and I know this is diverging from the actual topic of this thread, it is clear to me that your right to health care is a different sort of right than your right to free speech or your right to be free from unreasonable searches. No one else has to do anything for you to speak or for you to not be searched. Health care is different. Someone else has to do something for you to have a right to health care. What if they don't want to? Can you (or a government agent working on your behalf) compel someone else to provide you care?
It is a complex issue and the more closely I look at it the more complex it seems to get.
*sigh* There's plenty of powered furniture available, and has been for decades. Those crazy "As Seen On TV" powered folding beds have been around for ages. My new couch has push button electric recliners. Most cars today have powered seats; many of those electrically heated. The problem I'd have with furniture based power supplies is similar to the problem I have with built in electronics and adapters in vehicles. The lifetime of my furniture and vehicles greatly exceeds the probable lifetime of any consumer electronics power adapter installed in it. I used to work at a high end auto dealership. I installed dozens of iPod adapters (at around $400 a shot. Insanity!) and all of those adapters are worthless to the new generation of i devices that these customers are likely to have. Some of my customers had older vehicles with build in analog cell phones which are now junk that just rides around with them. Furniture is even worse. Decent furniture should last a lifetime. By putting a consumer electronics power port into a piece of furniture you're basically admitting that it's going to be trash in less than 10 years. Peter
So, what am I supposed to do? Not answer questions like that even when asked?
Correct. These people are not honorable, do not treat them as such. They lied to you in order to send more people to prison, regardless of their actual guilt. They are thugs and criminals.
That's largely how I feel. Maybe next time I'll just nod and smile and see what happens.
In that US region almost everyone would deny all of this, no matter of the education level. The light coming from the accretion disk of that black hole is coming here from before 6000 years ago, when the universe, earth, man, and everything else was created by the almighty god.
I'm an atheist with a college degree who works daily with salt of the earth types in the Bible Belt. In general, physics understanding is spotty around here but actual Young Earthers are extraordinarily rare (to the point where I've never actually met one). You're unlikely to find someone who can tell you the difference between weight and mass and if you want them to use a torque wrench make your specs in foot pounds instead of Newton meters. However, pictures of Jesus riding a T-Rex are taken as ridiculous jokes since, obviously, they weren't contemporaries.
Hell, the guys in the oil and gas industries make their fucking paychecks based on a fundamental understanding of geology, evolution, and the time scales involved.
You may want to question your assumptions more in the future if you would like your worldview to more accurately reflect reality.
Just a couple of weeks ago during my round as a potential juror the judge plainly stated that he would tell the jury what the relevant law is and how it should be applied. The jury was only to determine the facts of the case and if those facts ran afoul of the relevant law as described by the judge. He asked if any of us had any questions about that.
I asked if a not guilty verdict could be reached on the basis that the relevant law was immoral, unconstitutional, or would otherwise result in an unjust verdict.
Short answer: No.
(and this is where this becomes a rant...) So, this is the point where I get punted. The Fucking Crack Whore sitting next to me in the jury box made it deeper into the jury selection process than I. I was one of the few people in the room who appeared even remotely interested in the proceedings. Now I understand why so many fucking cases get plea bargained. I wouldn't want to put my fate in the hands a few semi-literate rednecks and a half dozen WWII vets. The first round of juror culling eliminated just about everyone that I would have wanted on a jury for me.
So, what am I supposed to do? Not answer questions like that even when asked?
Is it worth $8/hr for a gym to hire a kid to wipe sweat off the equipment in the afternoons?
If it's not worth paying someone a decent wage, it's not worth doing at all. If sweaty equpment is losing customers and money for you, damned right it's worth it.
And that's what happens. If an employer decides that mopping sweat is worth $6/hr then that employer will happily hire someone at $5/hr but hire no one at $8/hr and leave the job undone. The person who is hurt here is the invisible person who would have been happily working for this employer if it was legal to do so.
why not make the minimum wage $10,000/hr!
Are you stupid, or do you think the rest of us are? Your arguments for making people go hungry because they weren't born into the right family are shockingly obscene.
No, I'm not stupid; jury's still out on you though. I didn't think it was a very complex thought experiment. See, there's this range of possible minimum wages from $0/hr which is no minimum wage to stupidly high numbers like $10,000/hr. I could have made the Stupidly High Number anywhere from $100/hr to $10^29 / hr. I settled on $10,000/hr because it has a pretty number of zeroes in it. At any rate, at the Stupidly High Number end of the range there are Obvious Problems. These Obvious Problems are that no one can legally work because they are prohibited by law from entering into an employment agreement at rates acceptable to both the worker and the employer. Everyone goes hungry.
Now, here's the part that you failed to grasp. As you move down from the Stupidly High Number you are forcing fewer and fewer people into the "Would Work, But Legally Can't" category. Easily most of the population is in the WWBLC category until you get below, say, $30/hr. Now not everyone is going hungry, but many still are.
The WWBLC category gets smaller and smaller the closer the minimum wage gets to $0/hr.
I assert that the people in that WWBLC category are harmed by minimum wage laws. They're unjustly made into criminals by taking work. It is difficult to see or quantify them at "normal" minimum wages. The sweat mopper job that didn't ever exist because it wasn't worth doing doesn't get added onto some list and counted like a job that moved to China is counted. You never say that Timmy lost his sweat mopper job because the job never existed. Timmy is just sitting on his ass wishing he could find someone to give him a job for his $5/hr skill. Or, more likely, rather than going hungry Timmy is working in the grey market and getting paid his $5 in cash under the table. Now Timmy's a criminal, but at least he's working.
I'm not suggesting that people go hungry.
I'm suggesting that people be allowed to work at a wage that is mutually beneficial to both the worker and the employer. Why do you think you should have a veto power over their employment decision?
The flaw in your logic is that most of the jobs created at the sub-minimum wage level (in the absence of such a wage) wouldn't go to a 13-year-old making money to buy candy. They would go to people working five jobs trying to scrape by a living. Instead, with a minimum wage, those people scrape by a living while working only three jobs, thereby providing them a small amount of time at rest.
Also, minimum wage establishes a base line for education. As you point out, certain jobs are no longer worth hiring someone to do them. Those jobs by their wage point had little to no education requirement. Okay, so there are no longer jobs for people who chose to drop out of school in ninth grade and refuse to learn a trade. You know what? That's a fair trade to me. If those people have a development disability that prevents them for learning a skill, then we have a social safety net to help them.
Finally the $10,000/hr statement is just absurd right now, because that price point would eliminate all jobs except those requiring skill as a Fortune 500 CEO. Now, if we were a country with 501 citizens and 500 CEO jobs to fill? Then sure, it would be perfectly viable.
Why wouldn't they? My first job (coincidentally around age 13) was picking potatoes for fifty cents per barrel. I made enough to buy an Intellivision cartridge with a weekend afternoon of work. It was probably about $3.00 per hour for me.
Day laborers with no skills besides a willingness to work, many not even able to speak English, are in the same boat today. They are below your base line for education. Rather than allow them to improve their position in life by legal but low paying work, which gains them access to better skills and education, you suggest that they should become criminals by working at a wage that they can earn or become a burden upon society. What kind of trade is that? What is society getting in that trade?
I see that I managed to wing you with my point in the case of the $10,000/hr minimum wage. You can see how that minimum wage eliminates legal jobs. My assertion is that to a lesser degree this job destroying characteristic is inherent in lesser minimum wages. Minimum wages don't help people with educations and skills who are above that wage point. They hurt the weakest, poorest, least capable members of our society.
As you rightly observe, it doesn't take a lot of education or skills to lift yourself above minimum wage. Most of us manage to do it while we're still teenagers. But if you made the minimum wage a higher living wage then getting that critical First Real Job just got a lot harder for a lot of young people.
I think you're unfairly moderated as Troll here, so I'll reply and have you bumped up to insightful in just a few moments...:)
How much is a "decent wage?" I hear people all the time talk about a "living wage" on here, but nobody puts a dollar figure on it. Give me something concrete. What should the high-school drop-out ditch digger (or whatever) who has learned no marketable skills make? What kinds of things should someone making a "living" wage be able to buy? What things are over the line? For example, how new a car, what kinds of food, cell phones, cable TV, how big of house or apartment? Should this "living wage" increase because people live in a certain area, or should we pay them more because they have a bunch of kids? I want to know what a "living wage" really means.
Also, how much more should a person with a degree make than this base "living wage." I mean a real degree which enables someone to produce something of value. I'm talking about engineering, or science, or something medical (and there are plenty of others), not philosophy or communications or something that qualifies you to be a barista.
Here's how I've always attempted to communicate this idea that you're sharing.
When you impose a minimum wage there are, almost by definition, jobs that are no longer worth hiring someone to do.
Is it worth $8/hr for a gym to hire a kid to wipe sweat off the equipment in the afternoons? Probably not. Wipe your own sweat.
Is it worth $8/hr for the mechanic to figure out why your BMW's heated cupholder isn't working? Probably so. The shop is going to bill $150/hr for the repair, so the mechanic has plenty of room between $8/hr and $150/hr to carve out a reasonable salary, while the owner still gets paid too.
Now, to run the "decent wage" and minimum wage ideas to their absurd extreme. If a $0 minimum wage is bad, and a $10 minimum wage is little better, why not make the minimum wage $10,000/hr! We'll All Be Rich! I'll have two new cars by lunchtime! Obviously, "We'll all be rich!" is the wrong answer. We'll all be criminals and working for whatever we're worth is the correct answer. If you insist on being law abiding, you'll be unemployed. No one on/. is worth $10K/hr (I'm sorry if this is a shock to some). Obviously, $10K/hr minimum is extreme, but the effects of raising the minimum wage to a "living wage" of $20/hr would be similar. Now everyone is getting paid at least $40K/year for their full time jobs. Great! But your Papa John's pizza is going to go up by a bit more than $0.15 to make it worth selling crappy pizzas.
You've just cut the bottom four rungs off of the economic ladder. It is no longer possible to go from sweeping the floors at the auto shop, to doing oil changes, to changing brakes, to being a highly skilled mechanic working on high end cars. The only job in that chain that is worth hiring an employee for is the last one. Everyone below that point gets the shaft and becomes a criminal.
The simple fact is that minimum wage laws hurt the very ones they are supposed to be helping, either by eliminating their jobs or by forcing them into "under the table" working arrangements where they can be paid what they are worth.
Probably a good idea, but if your ship is blown up, and you are still alive, the chances you are going to be rescued is close to 0.
You're wearing a space suit so that you can operate in a ship that you have depressurized before combat begins. A breathable atmosphere in a combat spaceship would be a hazard.
After combat, you can re-pressurize your ship and resume floating around in your jumpsuit.
We finally have a winner. NO amount of tax revenue will EVER be enough to satisfy the appetite for money and power that surrounds Washington DC. Republicans and Democrats are on the same team even though they're wearing different jerseys. They want power and control. They want to make their friends rich and powerful. You're not their friend.
As a percentage of GDP, federal tax revenue has been lower than 2001 spending for every year except 2006 and 2007. Expenses have, of course, been even higher. But this suggests that even sustainable spending at 2001 levels requires raising federal tax revenues.
It suggests no such thing. If anything, it suggests the opposite. As the economy grows the percentage of GDP required to maintain 2001 levels of spending will drop.
This graph also clearly indicates that the ratio of spending to revenue has been greater than 1 for a generation (with a few anomalous years during Clinton's term, which weren't really surpluses when Social Security accounting gimmicks are accounted for) . This is a systemic problem, and not limited to one party or the other. The only surprising thing to me is how each party seems to be committed to making the problem worse than the party that was in power immediately before.
When I write my congressmen (may Sen. James Inhofe burn in Hell for 7,000 years) I like to make the following analogy.
If I managed my finances the way Congress manages the Nation's then I would be in jail. It is literally criminal.
I have been in situations where my expenses exceeded my current income. I understand the desire to raise my income to the point where I can buy everything that I want, without priorities, forever. However, my income is finite and always will be. I have to prioritize my spending and, most importantly, cut spending on the unessential things that break my budget. This is how responsible adults work.
The only people who don't make spending priorities or care about maintaining a sustainable budget are young children and criminals.
I will assert that if Congress magically managed to extract 50% of the GDP of the US in tax revenue that there would still be a budget shortfall. Congress has a huge spending problem that raising taxes will not fix. Look at that chart again. Look at a similar one that goes back to the Korean War. At no point in recent history has Congress ever thought "Times are good. We should save some for a rainy day." It is always "Put it on my Card. I'll be even fucking richer next year and then I'll pay all this shit off."
Just so long as you're not one of those dumb fucks who thinks cutting spending alone can fix the problem we'll get along fine....
Hi. Dumbfuck here.
Our spending would match our current tax revenue if we cut our spending levels back to the Dark Dark Days of... 2001. Surely you remember back then, there were no roads. The military was holding bake sales just to buy fuel for the B2 bombers. Senior citizens were starving in the ditches (they couldn't starve in the streets; there weren't any in 2001. Remember?) It was FUCKING ANARCHY!
The federal budget needs to be gone through with an axe, not with a scalpel. DoD, DoE, the other DoE, HUD, Medicare, Medicaid, SS, DEA not a one of them should be off the budget cutting table. There is No federal agency that couldn't operate today at 2001 budget levels and still have plenty of fat that could be trimmed.
If we go back into Ancient American History (the late 1990's) we even had a modest budget surplus (discounting the looming implicit debts of the soon to be retiring Baby Boomers).
Why do you believe this is an undesirable goal?
Was the Federal Government emaciated then?
Were American citizens getting good value for their tax dollars then?
Are they now?
I just can't imagine living in a society that thinks a firearm is a useful tool in an emergency.
I guess your imagination isn't very good.
Yes, we have bad guys, but we don't have this wild west world view that makes shooting people who are only stealing ok. Only protecting people warrants using lethal force. We just call the police. I don't know anyone who's moral beliefs support killing to protect property.
Sometimes protecting your stuff is the same as protecting people.
Generators sprout legs and walk away around here when the power goes out. Should I let someone carry off my generator that powers my water well and my refrigerator? I know! I'll feed my kids with my Moral Superiority!
When you're stealing my property, you're stealing the fraction of my life that I worked to acquire that property.
If it isn't about using a gold standard, why does the article keep giving examples of people using competing currencies that are *backed by gold*?
Because the author of the article wasn't terribly imaginative.
Your bank, Walmart, MS, or Apple could issue a currency backed by stock in their company, products, or nothing at all. It would be just as valid as any of the other fiat currencies in the world today. Would you be interested in an Oklahoma State Bank Dollar, or a Wal-buck, or a real M$, or iCent? Probably not, but you wouldn't be required to. US Dollars, backed by nothing but promises that they're worth something, are a similar financial fiction that only works because we agree to pretend like they're worth something. Hell, company gift cards are damned close to being corporate currencies already. Currencies backed by ounces of gold, gallons of gasoline, cups of coffee, kilowatt/hours of electricity, M&Ms, would be possible.
There would likely be some very bad currencies created. (Stay away from Pyro_Peter's_Pesos, for example) But other currencies might be very good. Some might be better than the US Dollar and maybe our government and the Fed would work to keep the Dollar good too.
Gold's price has gone from over $600 in the 80's, to less than $300 in the 90's back up to over $600 now. How again would this remove inflation & deflation? (The US dollar inflated between those two periods, so if gold is a counterweigh, then gold prices should have increased to match.)
The Free Competition in Currency Act is not about returning to the gold standard. It is about putting some more competition into the currency market with the expected result that good currency will drive out the bad. By not allowing competing currencies people are forced to do business with dollars backed by nothing but the full faith and credit of the US. (Which, ain't what it used to be) Ideally, the Dollar would be the good currency and be made better by the competition.
What happens if a huge amount of gold reserves are found? Everyone's money deflates.
True. But what are the odds of a 5,000,000 kilo gold asteroid falling into Lake Michigan or the sudden invention of a machine that cheaply transmutes aluminum into gold compared to the Fed cranking out another few trillion of paper money?
You do also know that we have fewer recessions than we did while in the gold standard, right?
Fewer per period of time or just fewer? We haven't been off the gold standard that long and we've had a few whoppers. But, once again, the Free Competition In Currency Act isn't about returning to a gold standard.
And that there is nothing preventing you from accepting gold as payment? See e-gold.com & their payments system.
If you are going to claim that a government agency is defrauding you, then there needs to be evidence: the inflation rate in the US has been less than 5% for almost all of the last decade, and much of that time it has been less than 2%. And you do know that inflationary bubbles aren't the only cause of asset bubbles or the only cause of recession?
Less than 5% inflation is HUGE. Over your lifetime it is crippling to anyone who saves money. Small percentages compounded over decades grow to large percentages very quickly.
A random metal is no more/less intrinsically valuable than random pieces of specially printed paper or of little black pixels in the shape of numbers on my bank's website.
Never said it was. Frankly, from an investing point of view I think gold is a terrible investment, little better than hiding a stack of dollars in a shoebox. However, the dollar could be made better. Which would benefit many of us.
Peter
The real counterfitters that we citizens need to be worried about is the Fed and Congress inflating the value of our money away. If you haven't had your congressman's ear recently telling them to knock it off then now is a good time to do so.
If there ARE any problems or clashes onboard a Mars vessel, outside of the simulator, all they have to do is have one guy dedicated to saying "Guys, we're on our way to MARS!" and poof! Problems solved.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a struggle for me. It seems reasonable to me that there should be access to basic medical care for all citizens with as little standing in the way of this care as possible. No one should die from Dysentery in the United States. On the other hand, if Pyro_Peter's Nuclear Anti-cancer Medicines, Inc. spends $10,000 to make each Fermium Armed Genetically Tailored Smart Bomb Anti-Cancer Pill then I completely understand that if we want more FAGTSBAC Pills (*whew* that was close to being a really baaaad acronym) then Pyro_Peter's Nuke Pills, Inc. must charge more than $10,000 for that pill.
I think the tough part here is that the line for "reasonable access to basic care" is in different places for different societies. I'd also be concerned that the act of drawing that line would be sufficient force to prevent it from naturally rising with time. What if that line was drawn in the 1920's US? Where would medicine be today? Would we have some metric like the Consumer Price Index but for medical care to keep moving that line up?
Finally, and I know this is diverging from the actual topic of this thread, it is clear to me that your right to health care is a different sort of right than your right to free speech or your right to be free from unreasonable searches. No one else has to do anything for you to speak or for you to not be searched. Health care is different. Someone else has to do something for you to have a right to health care. What if they don't want to? Can you (or a government agent working on your behalf) compel someone else to provide you care?
It is a complex issue and the more closely I look at it the more complex it seems to get.
Peter
*sigh*
There's plenty of powered furniture available, and has been for decades. Those crazy "As Seen On TV" powered folding beds have been around for ages. My new couch has push button electric recliners. Most cars today have powered seats; many of those electrically heated.
The problem I'd have with furniture based power supplies is similar to the problem I have with built in electronics and adapters in vehicles. The lifetime of my furniture and vehicles greatly exceeds the probable lifetime of any consumer electronics power adapter installed in it. I used to work at a high end auto dealership. I installed dozens of iPod adapters (at around $400 a shot. Insanity!) and all of those adapters are worthless to the new generation of i devices that these customers are likely to have. Some of my customers had older vehicles with build in analog cell phones which are now junk that just rides around with them.
Furniture is even worse. Decent furniture should last a lifetime. By putting a consumer electronics power port into a piece of furniture you're basically admitting that it's going to be trash in less than 10 years.
Peter
So, what am I supposed to do? Not answer questions like that even when asked?
Correct. These people are not honorable, do not treat them as such. They lied to you in order to send more people to prison, regardless of their actual guilt. They are thugs and criminals.
That's largely how I feel. Maybe next time I'll just nod and smile and see what happens.
Peter
In that US region almost everyone would deny all of this, no matter of the education level. The light coming from the accretion disk of that black hole is coming here from before 6000 years ago, when the universe, earth, man, and everything else was created by the almighty god.
I'm an atheist with a college degree who works daily with salt of the earth types in the Bible Belt. In general, physics understanding is spotty around here but actual Young Earthers are extraordinarily rare (to the point where I've never actually met one). You're unlikely to find someone who can tell you the difference between weight and mass and if you want them to use a torque wrench make your specs in foot pounds instead of Newton meters. However, pictures of Jesus riding a T-Rex are taken as ridiculous jokes since, obviously, they weren't contemporaries.
Hell, the guys in the oil and gas industries make their fucking paychecks based on a fundamental understanding of geology, evolution, and the time scales involved.
You may want to question your assumptions more in the future if you would like your worldview to more accurately reflect reality.
Peter
I asked if a not guilty verdict could be reached on the basis that the relevant law was immoral, unconstitutional, or would otherwise result in an unjust verdict.
Short answer: No.
(and this is where this becomes a rant...) So, this is the point where I get punted. The Fucking Crack Whore sitting next to me in the jury box made it deeper into the jury selection process than I. I was one of the few people in the room who appeared even remotely interested in the proceedings. Now I understand why so many fucking cases get plea bargained. I wouldn't want to put my fate in the hands a few semi-literate rednecks and a half dozen WWII vets. The first round of juror culling eliminated just about everyone that I would have wanted on a jury for me.
So, what am I supposed to do? Not answer questions like that even when asked?
Peter
That seems like a good way to minimize the ill effects of minimum wage laws. I don't believe we have anything like that in my state. Peter
Is it worth $8/hr for a gym to hire a kid to wipe sweat off the equipment in the afternoons?
If it's not worth paying someone a decent wage, it's not worth doing at all. If sweaty equpment is losing customers and money for you, damned right it's worth it.
And that's what happens. If an employer decides that mopping sweat is worth $6/hr then that employer will happily hire someone at $5/hr but hire no one at $8/hr and leave the job undone. The person who is hurt here is the invisible person who would have been happily working for this employer if it was legal to do so.
why not make the minimum wage $10,000/hr!
Are you stupid, or do you think the rest of us are? Your arguments for making people go hungry because they weren't born into the right family are shockingly obscene.
No, I'm not stupid; jury's still out on you though. I didn't think it was a very complex thought experiment. See, there's this range of possible minimum wages from $0/hr which is no minimum wage to stupidly high numbers like $10,000/hr. I could have made the Stupidly High Number anywhere from $100/hr to $10^29 / hr. I settled on $10,000/hr because it has a pretty number of zeroes in it. At any rate, at the Stupidly High Number end of the range there are Obvious Problems. These Obvious Problems are that no one can legally work because they are prohibited by law from entering into an employment agreement at rates acceptable to both the worker and the employer. Everyone goes hungry.
Now, here's the part that you failed to grasp. As you move down from the Stupidly High Number you are forcing fewer and fewer people into the "Would Work, But Legally Can't" category. Easily most of the population is in the WWBLC category until you get below, say, $30/hr. Now not everyone is going hungry, but many still are.
The WWBLC category gets smaller and smaller the closer the minimum wage gets to $0/hr.
I assert that the people in that WWBLC category are harmed by minimum wage laws. They're unjustly made into criminals by taking work. It is difficult to see or quantify them at "normal" minimum wages. The sweat mopper job that didn't ever exist because it wasn't worth doing doesn't get added onto some list and counted like a job that moved to China is counted. You never say that Timmy lost his sweat mopper job because the job never existed. Timmy is just sitting on his ass wishing he could find someone to give him a job for his $5/hr skill. Or, more likely, rather than going hungry Timmy is working in the grey market and getting paid his $5 in cash under the table. Now Timmy's a criminal, but at least he's working.
I'm not suggesting that people go hungry.
I'm suggesting that people be allowed to work at a wage that is mutually beneficial to both the worker and the employer. Why do you think you should have a veto power over their employment decision?
Peter
The flaw in your logic is that most of the jobs created at the sub-minimum wage level (in the absence of such a wage) wouldn't go to a 13-year-old making money to buy candy. They would go to people working five jobs trying to scrape by a living. Instead, with a minimum wage, those people scrape by a living while working only three jobs, thereby providing them a small amount of time at rest.
Also, minimum wage establishes a base line for education. As you point out, certain jobs are no longer worth hiring someone to do them. Those jobs by their wage point had little to no education requirement. Okay, so there are no longer jobs for people who chose to drop out of school in ninth grade and refuse to learn a trade. You know what? That's a fair trade to me. If those people have a development disability that prevents them for learning a skill, then we have a social safety net to help them.
Finally the $10,000/hr statement is just absurd right now, because that price point would eliminate all jobs except those requiring skill as a Fortune 500 CEO. Now, if we were a country with 501 citizens and 500 CEO jobs to fill? Then sure, it would be perfectly viable.
Why wouldn't they? My first job (coincidentally around age 13) was picking potatoes for fifty cents per barrel. I made enough to buy an Intellivision cartridge with a weekend afternoon of work. It was probably about $3.00 per hour for me.
Day laborers with no skills besides a willingness to work, many not even able to speak English, are in the same boat today. They are below your base line for education. Rather than allow them to improve their position in life by legal but low paying work, which gains them access to better skills and education, you suggest that they should become criminals by working at a wage that they can earn or become a burden upon society. What kind of trade is that? What is society getting in that trade?
I see that I managed to wing you with my point in the case of the $10,000/hr minimum wage. You can see how that minimum wage eliminates legal jobs. My assertion is that to a lesser degree this job destroying characteristic is inherent in lesser minimum wages. Minimum wages don't help people with educations and skills who are above that wage point. They hurt the weakest, poorest, least capable members of our society.
As you rightly observe, it doesn't take a lot of education or skills to lift yourself above minimum wage. Most of us manage to do it while we're still teenagers. But if you made the minimum wage a higher living wage then getting that critical First Real Job just got a lot harder for a lot of young people.
Peter
How much is a "decent wage?" I hear people all the time talk about a "living wage" on here, but nobody puts a dollar figure on it. Give me something concrete. What should the high-school drop-out ditch digger (or whatever) who has learned no marketable skills make? What kinds of things should someone making a "living" wage be able to buy? What things are over the line? For example, how new a car, what kinds of food, cell phones, cable TV, how big of house or apartment? Should this "living wage" increase because people live in a certain area, or should we pay them more because they have a bunch of kids? I want to know what a "living wage" really means.
Also, how much more should a person with a degree make than this base "living wage." I mean a real degree which enables someone to produce something of value. I'm talking about engineering, or science, or something medical (and there are plenty of others), not philosophy or communications or something that qualifies you to be a barista.
Here's how I've always attempted to communicate this idea that you're sharing.
When you impose a minimum wage there are, almost by definition, jobs that are no longer worth hiring someone to do.
Is it worth $8/hr for a gym to hire a kid to wipe sweat off the equipment in the afternoons? Probably not. Wipe your own sweat.
Is it worth $8/hr for the mechanic to figure out why your BMW's heated cupholder isn't working? Probably so. The shop is going to bill $150/hr for the repair, so the mechanic has plenty of room between $8/hr and $150/hr to carve out a reasonable salary, while the owner still gets paid too.
Now, to run the "decent wage" and minimum wage ideas to their absurd extreme. If a $0 minimum wage is bad, and a $10 minimum wage is little better, why not make the minimum wage $10,000/hr! We'll All Be Rich! I'll have two new cars by lunchtime! Obviously, "We'll all be rich!" is the wrong answer. We'll all be criminals and working for whatever we're worth is the correct answer. If you insist on being law abiding, you'll be unemployed. No one on /. is worth $10K/hr (I'm sorry if this is a shock to some). Obviously, $10K/hr minimum is extreme, but the effects of raising the minimum wage to a "living wage" of $20/hr would be similar. Now everyone is getting paid at least $40K/year for their full time jobs. Great! But your Papa John's pizza is going to go up by a bit more than $0.15 to make it worth selling crappy pizzas.
You've just cut the bottom four rungs off of the economic ladder. It is no longer possible to go from sweeping the floors at the auto shop, to doing oil changes, to changing brakes, to being a highly skilled mechanic working on high end cars. The only job in that chain that is worth hiring an employee for is the last one. Everyone below that point gets the shaft and becomes a criminal.
The simple fact is that minimum wage laws hurt the very ones they are supposed to be helping, either by eliminating their jobs or by forcing them into "under the table" working arrangements where they can be paid what they are worth.
Peter
1. Always wear a space suit in combat. Duh.
Probably a good idea, but if your ship is blown up, and you are still alive, the chances you are going to be rescued is close to 0.
You're wearing a space suit so that you can operate in a ship that you have depressurized before combat begins. A breathable atmosphere in a combat spaceship would be a hazard.
After combat, you can re-pressurize your ship and resume floating around in your jumpsuit.
Peter
Peter
As a percentage of GDP, federal tax revenue has been lower than 2001 spending for every year except 2006 and 2007. Expenses have, of course, been even higher. But this suggests that even sustainable spending at 2001 levels requires raising federal tax revenues.
It suggests no such thing. If anything, it suggests the opposite. As the economy grows the percentage of GDP required to maintain 2001 levels of spending will drop.
This graph also clearly indicates that the ratio of spending to revenue has been greater than 1 for a generation (with a few anomalous years during Clinton's term, which weren't really surpluses when Social Security accounting gimmicks are accounted for) . This is a systemic problem, and not limited to one party or the other. The only surprising thing to me is how each party seems to be committed to making the problem worse than the party that was in power immediately before.
When I write my congressmen (may Sen. James Inhofe burn in Hell for 7,000 years) I like to make the following analogy.
If I managed my finances the way Congress manages the Nation's then I would be in jail. It is literally criminal.
I have been in situations where my expenses exceeded my current income. I understand the desire to raise my income to the point where I can buy everything that I want, without priorities, forever. However, my income is finite and always will be. I have to prioritize my spending and, most importantly, cut spending on the unessential things that break my budget. This is how responsible adults work.
The only people who don't make spending priorities or care about maintaining a sustainable budget are young children and criminals.
I will assert that if Congress magically managed to extract 50% of the GDP of the US in tax revenue that there would still be a budget shortfall. Congress has a huge spending problem that raising taxes will not fix. Look at that chart again. Look at a similar one that goes back to the Korean War. At no point in recent history has Congress ever thought "Times are good. We should save some for a rainy day." It is always "Put it on my Card. I'll be even fucking richer next year and then I'll pay all this shit off."
Peter
Just so long as you're not one of those dumb fucks who thinks cutting spending alone can fix the problem we'll get along fine....
Hi. Dumbfuck here.
Our spending would match our current tax revenue if we cut our spending levels back to the Dark Dark Days of... 2001. Surely you remember back then, there were no roads. The military was holding bake sales just to buy fuel for the B2 bombers. Senior citizens were starving in the ditches (they couldn't starve in the streets; there weren't any in 2001. Remember?) It was FUCKING ANARCHY!
The federal budget needs to be gone through with an axe, not with a scalpel. DoD, DoE, the other DoE, HUD, Medicare, Medicaid, SS, DEA not a one of them should be off the budget cutting table. There is No federal agency that couldn't operate today at 2001 budget levels and still have plenty of fat that could be trimmed.
If we go back into Ancient American History (the late 1990's) we even had a modest budget surplus (discounting the looming implicit debts of the soon to be retiring Baby Boomers).
Why do you believe this is an undesirable goal?
Was the Federal Government emaciated then?
Were American citizens getting good value for their tax dollars then? Are they now?
Peter
I just can't imagine living in a society that thinks a firearm is a useful tool in an emergency.
I guess your imagination isn't very good.
Yes, we have bad guys, but we don't have this wild west world view that makes shooting people who are only stealing ok. Only protecting people warrants using lethal force. We just call the police. I don't know anyone who's moral beliefs support killing to protect property.
Sometimes protecting your stuff is the same as protecting people.
Generators sprout legs and walk away around here when the power goes out. Should I let someone carry off my generator that powers my water well and my refrigerator? I know! I'll feed my kids with my Moral Superiority!
When you're stealing my property, you're stealing the fraction of my life that I worked to acquire that property.
Peter
If it isn't about using a gold standard, why does the article keep giving examples of people using competing currencies that are *backed by gold*?
Because the author of the article wasn't terribly imaginative.
Your bank, Walmart, MS, or Apple could issue a currency backed by stock in their company, products, or nothing at all. It would be just as valid as any of the other fiat currencies in the world today. Would you be interested in an Oklahoma State Bank Dollar, or a Wal-buck, or a real M$, or iCent? Probably not, but you wouldn't be required to. US Dollars, backed by nothing but promises that they're worth something, are a similar financial fiction that only works because we agree to pretend like they're worth something. Hell, company gift cards are damned close to being corporate currencies already. Currencies backed by ounces of gold, gallons of gasoline, cups of coffee, kilowatt/hours of electricity, M&Ms, would be possible.
There would likely be some very bad currencies created. (Stay away from Pyro_Peter's_Pesos, for example) But other currencies might be very good. Some might be better than the US Dollar and maybe our government and the Fed would work to keep the Dollar good too.
Peter
It's true, your post isn't a troll, it's more like flamebait. But, those things overlap.
touché
Peter
Gold's price has gone from over $600 in the 80's, to less than $300 in the 90's back up to over $600 now. How again would this remove inflation & deflation? (The US dollar inflated between those two periods, so if gold is a counterweigh, then gold prices should have increased to match.)
The Free Competition in Currency Act is not about returning to the gold standard. It is about putting some more competition into the currency market with the expected result that good currency will drive out the bad. By not allowing competing currencies people are forced to do business with dollars backed by nothing but the full faith and credit of the US. (Which, ain't what it used to be) Ideally, the Dollar would be the good currency and be made better by the competition.
What happens if a huge amount of gold reserves are found? Everyone's money deflates.
True. But what are the odds of a 5,000,000 kilo gold asteroid falling into Lake Michigan or the sudden invention of a machine that cheaply transmutes aluminum into gold compared to the Fed cranking out another few trillion of paper money?
You do also know that we have fewer recessions than we did while in the gold standard, right?
Fewer per period of time or just fewer? We haven't been off the gold standard that long and we've had a few whoppers. But, once again, the Free Competition In Currency Act isn't about returning to a gold standard.
And that there is nothing preventing you from accepting gold as payment? See e-gold.com & their payments system.
Nothing except the Secret Service
If you are going to claim that a government agency is defrauding you, then there needs to be evidence: the inflation rate in the US has been less than 5% for almost all of the last decade, and much of that time it has been less than 2%. And you do know that inflationary bubbles aren't the only cause of asset bubbles or the only cause of recession?
Less than 5% inflation is HUGE. Over your lifetime it is crippling to anyone who saves money. Small percentages compounded over decades grow to large percentages very quickly.
A random metal is no more/less intrinsically valuable than random pieces of specially printed paper or of little black pixels in the shape of numbers on my bank's website.
Never said it was. Frankly, from an investing point of view I think gold is a terrible investment, little better than hiding a stack of dollars in a shoebox. However, the dollar could be made better. Which would benefit many of us.
Peter
Troll? Really? Asking your congressmen to act responsibly with your money is a Troll?
Peter
The Free Competition in Currency Act and Federal Reserve Transparency Act are good places to start. Talk to your congressman today and ask them to sober up.
Peter
That's why I've listed my address as 1060 West Addison, Chicago IL for about 30 years now...
Peter
You can still use it, but only in moderation.
Pyro
You must be new here.
Peter
That works for road trips to Mardi Gras also.
Peter
So, would that be a Jick Doke?
Peter