This seems to blow past the standardized testing itself being part of the problem, no?
I don't see standardized testing being part of the problem. Things like "teaching to the test" are just a rather obvious sign that the school in question no longer educates its students, but milks them for funding.
You have them because developers preyed upon white flight fears of people all over the USA and decided to make money on that fear
I take it you don't have a clue why suburbs exist. They don't exist to keep the funny looking people out. They exist because they were a remarkably fast and cheap way to have your own home on your own land. The low crime rates were a solid plus as well.
Total BS. It's never been about school quality - the story of that last 30 years has been diminishing industrial bases, zoning, tax dollars and white flight - and you KNOW this!
My view is that even in the light of these alleged problems, you can still have a great school. It just requires that the school focus on educating its students. It doesn't take a lot of resources, but it does take a willingness to do what is right both in the school and among the students. Since that isn't happening in so many schools across the US, then I'm not going to waste my time those schools that don't intend to educate students and students who won't be taught.
The solution is not to play Prisoners' Dilemma. If one looks at actual social problems where the Prisoners' Dilemma matters such as speeding on highways, corruption, etc, the way to deal with it is to change the value of defection (and perhaps cooperation as well) so that it is no longer the better choice (speeding tickets, actually nailing bureaucrats and politicians for corruption with significant prison sentences).
And it's worth noting that one has a lot more options and knowledge for planning for retirement now than they did back in 1935. I think we ought to rerun that experiment now.
One way or another the elderly will be paid for by working age people. It's really just a matter of how to organize it and how many elderly people without support you're willing to let die.
Unless that can't be affordable. Then it won't happen. That's the problem with these fantasies. Someone has to pay for them. Social Security has the problem that it promises to pay out considerably more over the average lifetime of a recipient than they put in, but never does anything useful with the money that is put into that system. The money is used to buy US bonds, which are just a mechanism for tossing Social Security money into the general fund and squandered.
But even if we take those bonds at face value as some sort of investment that will always pay out, we still have the problem that they aren't earning enough to pay for current Social Security promises. The system is insolvent on several different levels.
What hasn't been demonstrated is that keeping kids in bad schools has any positive effect on those schools.
Even if you do not send him to public school, at one point he will have to interact with the one that went there. If public school is a corrupting environment, it will be bad for your child.
So what? Socialization at dysfunctional public schools is highly overrated. And if your student has a lifetime of experience with real life rather than just with a meaningless youth-oriented materialist culture of a bad high school, then he or she will be more resistant to the lures of that culture.
The bottom line is that big science isn't important enough that you'd be willing to fund it personally. That tells me all I need to know about your real priorities.
Either the kids get spread out among better performing schools with the more involved students and parents, or they get moved into another shitty school.
Better outcome right there. And eventually you run out of shitty schools. I am not presenting this strategy as a best possible strategy, but merely a better strategy than is currently implemented.
There is a long generational tradition in the USA of sacrificing for the next generation starting with the revolutionary war.
I guess starting with the New Deal, that there was also a long generational tradition of sacrificing the next generation for self-interest and ideological reasons. Throwing students into bad schools is not a noble sacrifice for that generation no matter how you spin it.
You say the problem is with "students who don't want to be there and disrupt the operation of the classroom." What were you, the biggest nerd in school? Why do you have such a bone to pick with the other "less diligent" students? Sure, they contribute to the problem, but (except in your fantasy land) they are not the problem. The problem is complex and it encompasses many different aspects of the way our school system is structured. For examples of how a "good" public education system is run, we could look to other countries such as Finland, Hong Kong, Japan and the Netherlands.
I actually spoke with people who taught in urban public schools in the US. In addition to being a brutal environment that chews up and spits out new teachers, there's a lot of kids who don't want to be there either. And they disrupt classes for those who do.
The US does sometimes run schools like those great European examples and sometimes it doesn't. It is worth noting that the US spends a considerable amount on education and doesn't get education results commensurate with that spending.
I'm simply explaining the social dilemma surrounding public education
It's not a social dilemma for those other countries because those school systems are much better run. It's my belief that some US school systems are so bad, that it would be better to do away with them altogether than keep them in their present state. They're just really awful, dangerous, and expensive baby sitting services.
You've already amply demonstrated that no amount of evidence will ever make you take a scientific analysis of climate change seriously.
That argument hasn't been tried yet. The AGW side keeps overstating its case. The scientific analysis isn't as good as claimed.
"Ridiculously common" is an apt description of the denalist tendency to shriek "ad hominem!" every time somewhat accurately identifies them, and their constant pretense that appeal to authority is at the basis of scientifically based climatological arguments.
But then it doesn't materially matter to this discussion whether "denialists" (a blatantly ad hominem term right there) are "shrieking" or not via a keyboard. That's irrelevant to the "denialist" argument and hence, why it is an ad hominem attack.
Here, once again, the considerable bias in support of AGW in modern research is ignored. It's worth noting once again that a researcher has probably helped his funding situation by tenuously tying AGW to a problem that would have existed as is even in the absence of contributions from AGW.
The problem here is that they are advocating that good parents sacrifice the well being and future of their children just so schools can have a slightly better education outcome. There's another group that could be making that sacrifice instead - the students who don't want to be there and disrupt the operation of the classroom. Boot those students out instead,
Public education will keep getting worse because the people who can make the biggest difference lack the incentives to do so.
This shared vulnerability crap isn't going to work. It's just stupid parasite rhetoric. The reason the school systems suck in the first place is because they got taken over by parasites. Less diligent students means lower test scores and less warm bodies in the classroom. That means less funding and hence. less money and power for the parasites running things.
These schools went downhill well before students fled to private schools. Bringing back the parents who care isn't going to change that.
You sending your kid to public school won't be great, but if everyone did it would help a lot.
I doubt most people buy that. I have a better solution: end the school.
My view is that the very same argument could be used, if you stopped being a customer of a big business because they screwed you egregiously in the past. By not being a customer, you're making the business worse by denying it your input. Enough customers leave and the business collapses - incidentally fixing the problem.
Somehow a terrible public school is different and students are encouraged here to sacrifice their futures so that the school can give a slightly less horrible education outcome.
You can vote for a new school board. Volunteer to help their election campaign. Or run for election yourself. You actually have MORE voice there than with a private school, where losing 1 customer is quite frankly not a big deal.
One customer is a bigger deal than one taxpayer. The former can stop paying. Money speaks louder than words do.
the fact of global warming is established to all but the shrieking denialists
I'd take AGW arguments more seriously if they weren't so dependent on rhetorical fallacies. Ad hominem attacks such as the above ("shrieking denialists") and appeals to authority ("97% of scientists") are ridiculously common.
Such a low wage would be unacceptable unless you supplement it with welfare
While I'm willing to accept some degree of welfare, it's worth noting that what is unacceptable now will probably become acceptable in the next few decades unless something is done to reverse this ongoing decline.
Your $1000 per month welfare supplement, no strings attached over 310 million people (the population of the US) is roughly 3.8 trillion dollars of welfare a year - more than the US currently spends on everything including mandatory spending.
Who is paying for that? Even if we throw away everything else, we still need to come up with about 1.3-1.4 trillion US to make up that shortfall (on 2012 tax revenue of roughly 2.45 trillion). That's more than a 50% increase over current federal taxes, including every way they gather income. That's also almost a quarter of GDP. I don't think it's remotely sustainable.
And now you've redirected even more revenue away from the people who employ other people and given it to people who don't do those things.
Hence, the quoted comment "You do need to be somewhat of an idiot, at least about finances." Expectation need not be met in the real world. And if that expectation of earning a living for something that no one is paying for is "greed" (as another poster apparently has alleged), then so be it.
And yes, I - like the particle physicist - am unemployed - doing low level stuff to keep the bills paid. Yes, I will do what I have to do to survive in a world based on money instead of long term planning, but my heart just is not in anything else....and it shows.
Well, I have to say that I'm in the same boat, though with a job I like doing and the ability to put away some funds (there is some room for long term planning in there).
I picked up a PhD in math, but I did so with the understanding that I probably wouldn't need (I consider it useful not necessary) it for anything I did for the rest of my life. When I saw people who were clearly better than me, smarter, harder working, more productive, etc having a great deal of trouble getting traditional math jobs (generally those jobs get two orders of magnitude more applications than there are positions, people applying generally apply to several dozen to several hundred positions, but there are more people than positions), I decided I just wasn't going to go that route and waste all that time.
How about fixing the minimum wage? The value of the minimum wage has not at all kept up with inflation. In countries like Australia it's at $15. Accounting for inflation the US min wage is half what it was when first introduced.
So we "fix" labor issues by making it even more expensive to employ people? The problem with your proposal is that it fixes minimum wage in the wrong direction. Low labor force participation means we need to lower minimum wage not raise it.
Labor costs are not particularly affected by regulation and liability. Nor are they affected by taxation.
US workers are roughly 7% more expensive to employers because of Social Security taxes that the employers pay directly to Uncle Sam. As to the other usual income taxes, if those went down, the benefit would be shared between employer and employee because employment is a competitive market.
Labor costs are not particularly affected by regulation and liability.
Except that those things cost a lot especially for a small business. Even when regulation doesn't apply directly to labor, it can still cost money and hence, steal funds that a business could have used to employ people instead.
And there are a bunch of developed world government policies that deliberately constrict labor force participation. For example, in the US, we have subsidized student loans (encouraging people to go to school rather than get a job), prison (highest incarceration rates in the developed world), indefinite unemployment insurance payouts, disability, and Social Security payments (encouraging people to retire at a fixed age).
That results in lower supply of labor and higher costs for who does get hired. It also means yet another considerable incentive for US businesses to find ways to avoid employing people.
And all along you've been ignoring the elephant in the room, cheap global labor. Even with the relative decline in real wages of the developed world versus the developing world, it remains that a lot of jobs don't make sense to do in the developed world. If your labor is the sole source of your wealth and its value declines because there's so much more of it, then you will see a decline in your wealth.
Lots of people are employed. They just aren't getting employed in the developed world.
Unemployed people consume lots less than employed people.
[...]
Until the consumer class starts growing again demand will stay low and along with it labor force participation.
Wealth is not consumption. Short term economic activity need not lead to long term economic growth. We don't need a "consumer class", much less a growing one.
And what's with using munitions that are radio-active, cue idiots claiming depleted uranium isn't dangerous.
Hi.
The point of using depleted uranium in armor piercing rounds is because it is dangerous enough to kill a heavily armored tank and its occupants with a direct, high velocity hit.
As to radiactivity, it's worth noting once again that the actual environmental risk from depleted uranium is due to its chemical toxicity.
What this says is that every rich person in this country is lying through their teeth about needing immigrants.
Because every rich person in the US has been complaining endlessly about not having enough particle physicists for their businesses. They just want those cheap injuns on aich won bees.
This isn't very amiable to the current "get rich quick" culture the Boomers are espousing as they approach their retirement.
Gotta fit a completely irrelevant bash on the Baby Boomers in. So Mommy and Daddy were bad people. Got it.
This is society reaching back and giving people who love science the middle finger.
You know, you could just do it yourself rather than depend on a middle finger-giving society. If a state of the art particle accelerator is too much for your personal finances, maybe you could find a bunch of people to chip in. A lot of the disease here is depending on society to fund your personal desires rather than doing them yourself.
Or perhaps they comprehend it just fine, but they make a choice you disagree with: Like after working a 10 hour shift for $7.25 an hour, they would like to have at least a small creature comfort, so they buy a six pack of beer (or soda), instead of going home and enjoying tasteless and bland tap-water. The thing about being poor that everyone forgets is that everything that might relieve the boredom and stress of long hours for little reward costs something. It's easy to say "I'll save a few dollars a day" when you've got a fat paycheck -- but when you have nothing and you're looking to those couple of dollars leftover in your wallet, it's hard to say "You don't exist, go away". But psychology aside, there's still the troubling issue of your really, really bad math skills.
Well, I'll just note here that for all the talk of the special financial qualities of a slashdotter, ranting on the internet (and playing games on your laptop) is cheaper and more entertaining than drinking beer/soda every day.
Bottom line here is that your assertion that saving the equivalent of three sodas a day ($4.50) can buy someone a college education is possible, but absurd.
That's over $1600 per year. If they threw that into a DRIP (Dividend ReInvestment Program) for a fairly stable company, they'd also probably would grow that money to an extent.
Also, I don't think a minimum wage should be livable in your sense. The problem here is that there's a lot of people who currently aren't worth current minimum wage and hence, aren't employed. So they get $0 per hour rather than $7.25 per hour. But an employer might be willing to take a chance on them, if the employee were paid, say, $3 per hour. Now, $3 per hour obviously isn't "livable" by your standard, but it is more than $0 per hour. But it seems a better approach to dealing with the unemployed than the usual tricks, like throwing them on disability (both the US and UK do this to some degree though apparently the UK has recently knocked a bunch of people off those rolls).
Slashdot Mirror
This seems to blow past the standardized testing itself being part of the problem, no?
I don't see standardized testing being part of the problem. Things like "teaching to the test" are just a rather obvious sign that the school in question no longer educates its students, but milks them for funding.
You have them because developers preyed upon white flight fears of people all over the USA and decided to make money on that fear
I take it you don't have a clue why suburbs exist. They don't exist to keep the funny looking people out. They exist because they were a remarkably fast and cheap way to have your own home on your own land. The low crime rates were a solid plus as well.
Total BS. It's never been about school quality - the story of that last 30 years has been diminishing industrial bases, zoning, tax dollars and white flight - and you KNOW this!
My view is that even in the light of these alleged problems, you can still have a great school. It just requires that the school focus on educating its students. It doesn't take a lot of resources, but it does take a willingness to do what is right both in the school and among the students. Since that isn't happening in so many schools across the US, then I'm not going to waste my time those schools that don't intend to educate students and students who won't be taught.
The solution is not to play Prisoners' Dilemma. If one looks at actual social problems where the Prisoners' Dilemma matters such as speeding on highways, corruption, etc, the way to deal with it is to change the value of defection (and perhaps cooperation as well) so that it is no longer the better choice (speeding tickets, actually nailing bureaucrats and politicians for corruption with significant prison sentences).
And it's worth noting that one has a lot more options and knowledge for planning for retirement now than they did back in 1935. I think we ought to rerun that experiment now.
One way or another the elderly will be paid for by working age people. It's really just a matter of how to organize it and how many elderly people without support you're willing to let die.
Unless that can't be affordable. Then it won't happen. That's the problem with these fantasies. Someone has to pay for them. Social Security has the problem that it promises to pay out considerably more over the average lifetime of a recipient than they put in, but never does anything useful with the money that is put into that system. The money is used to buy US bonds, which are just a mechanism for tossing Social Security money into the general fund and squandered.
But even if we take those bonds at face value as some sort of investment that will always pay out, we still have the problem that they aren't earning enough to pay for current Social Security promises. The system is insolvent on several different levels.
Even if you do not send him to public school, at one point he will have to interact with the one that went there. If public school is a corrupting environment, it will be bad for your child.
So what? Socialization at dysfunctional public schools is highly overrated. And if your student has a lifetime of experience with real life rather than just with a meaningless youth-oriented materialist culture of a bad high school, then he or she will be more resistant to the lures of that culture.
The bottom line is that big science isn't important enough that you'd be willing to fund it personally. That tells me all I need to know about your real priorities.
There's also D) The school system is corrupt and not actually listening to the input of concerned parents.
Either the kids get spread out among better performing schools with the more involved students and parents, or they get moved into another shitty school.
Better outcome right there. And eventually you run out of shitty schools. I am not presenting this strategy as a best possible strategy, but merely a better strategy than is currently implemented.
There is a long generational tradition in the USA of sacrificing for the next generation starting with the revolutionary war.
I guess starting with the New Deal, that there was also a long generational tradition of sacrificing the next generation for self-interest and ideological reasons. Throwing students into bad schools is not a noble sacrifice for that generation no matter how you spin it.
You say the problem is with "students who don't want to be there and disrupt the operation of the classroom." What were you, the biggest nerd in school? Why do you have such a bone to pick with the other "less diligent" students? Sure, they contribute to the problem, but (except in your fantasy land) they are not the problem. The problem is complex and it encompasses many different aspects of the way our school system is structured. For examples of how a "good" public education system is run, we could look to other countries such as Finland, Hong Kong, Japan and the Netherlands.
I actually spoke with people who taught in urban public schools in the US. In addition to being a brutal environment that chews up and spits out new teachers, there's a lot of kids who don't want to be there either. And they disrupt classes for those who do.
The US does sometimes run schools like those great European examples and sometimes it doesn't. It is worth noting that the US spends a considerable amount on education and doesn't get education results commensurate with that spending.
I'm simply explaining the social dilemma surrounding public education
It's not a social dilemma for those other countries because those school systems are much better run. It's my belief that some US school systems are so bad, that it would be better to do away with them altogether than keep them in their present state. They're just really awful, dangerous, and expensive baby sitting services.
You've already amply demonstrated that no amount of evidence will ever make you take a scientific analysis of climate change seriously.
That argument hasn't been tried yet. The AGW side keeps overstating its case. The scientific analysis isn't as good as claimed.
"Ridiculously common" is an apt description of the denalist tendency to shriek "ad hominem!" every time somewhat accurately identifies them, and their constant pretense that appeal to authority is at the basis of scientifically based climatological arguments.
But then it doesn't materially matter to this discussion whether "denialists" (a blatantly ad hominem term right there) are "shrieking" or not via a keyboard. That's irrelevant to the "denialist" argument and hence, why it is an ad hominem attack.
Here, once again, the considerable bias in support of AGW in modern research is ignored. It's worth noting once again that a researcher has probably helped his funding situation by tenuously tying AGW to a problem that would have existed as is even in the absence of contributions from AGW.
Public education will keep getting worse because the people who can make the biggest difference lack the incentives to do so.
This shared vulnerability crap isn't going to work. It's just stupid parasite rhetoric. The reason the school systems suck in the first place is because they got taken over by parasites. Less diligent students means lower test scores and less warm bodies in the classroom. That means less funding and hence. less money and power for the parasites running things.
These schools went downhill well before students fled to private schools. Bringing back the parents who care isn't going to change that.
You sending your kid to public school won't be great, but if everyone did it would help a lot.
I doubt most people buy that. I have a better solution: end the school.
My view is that the very same argument could be used, if you stopped being a customer of a big business because they screwed you egregiously in the past. By not being a customer, you're making the business worse by denying it your input. Enough customers leave and the business collapses - incidentally fixing the problem.
Somehow a terrible public school is different and students are encouraged here to sacrifice their futures so that the school can give a slightly less horrible education outcome.
You can vote for a new school board. Volunteer to help their election campaign. Or run for election yourself. You actually have MORE voice there than with a private school, where losing 1 customer is quite frankly not a big deal.
One customer is a bigger deal than one taxpayer. The former can stop paying. Money speaks louder than words do.
the fact of global warming is established to all but the shrieking denialists
I'd take AGW arguments more seriously if they weren't so dependent on rhetorical fallacies. Ad hominem attacks such as the above ("shrieking denialists") and appeals to authority ("97% of scientists") are ridiculously common.
Well, I'm not asking dishonest loaded questions. That's good enough for me.
Such a low wage would be unacceptable unless you supplement it with welfare
While I'm willing to accept some degree of welfare, it's worth noting that what is unacceptable now will probably become acceptable in the next few decades unless something is done to reverse this ongoing decline.
Your $1000 per month welfare supplement, no strings attached over 310 million people (the population of the US) is roughly 3.8 trillion dollars of welfare a year - more than the US currently spends on everything including mandatory spending.
Who is paying for that? Even if we throw away everything else, we still need to come up with about 1.3-1.4 trillion US to make up that shortfall (on 2012 tax revenue of roughly 2.45 trillion). That's more than a 50% increase over current federal taxes, including every way they gather income. That's also almost a quarter of GDP. I don't think it's remotely sustainable.
And now you've redirected even more revenue away from the people who employ other people and given it to people who don't do those things.
I just expected to be able to earn a living.
Hence, the quoted comment "You do need to be somewhat of an idiot, at least about finances." Expectation need not be met in the real world. And if that expectation of earning a living for something that no one is paying for is "greed" (as another poster apparently has alleged), then so be it.
And yes, I - like the particle physicist - am unemployed - doing low level stuff to keep the bills paid. Yes, I will do what I have to do to survive in a world based on money instead of long term planning, but my heart just is not in anything else....and it shows.
Well, I have to say that I'm in the same boat, though with a job I like doing and the ability to put away some funds (there is some room for long term planning in there).
I picked up a PhD in math, but I did so with the understanding that I probably wouldn't need (I consider it useful not necessary) it for anything I did for the rest of my life. When I saw people who were clearly better than me, smarter, harder working, more productive, etc having a great deal of trouble getting traditional math jobs (generally those jobs get two orders of magnitude more applications than there are positions, people applying generally apply to several dozen to several hundred positions, but there are more people than positions), I decided I just wasn't going to go that route and waste all that time.
How about fixing the minimum wage? The value of the minimum wage has not at all kept up with inflation. In countries like Australia it's at $15. Accounting for inflation the US min wage is half what it was when first introduced.
So we "fix" labor issues by making it even more expensive to employ people? The problem with your proposal is that it fixes minimum wage in the wrong direction. Low labor force participation means we need to lower minimum wage not raise it.
Labor costs are not particularly affected by regulation and liability. Nor are they affected by taxation.
US workers are roughly 7% more expensive to employers because of Social Security taxes that the employers pay directly to Uncle Sam. As to the other usual income taxes, if those went down, the benefit would be shared between employer and employee because employment is a competitive market.
Labor costs are not particularly affected by regulation and liability.
Except that those things cost a lot especially for a small business. Even when regulation doesn't apply directly to labor, it can still cost money and hence, steal funds that a business could have used to employ people instead.
And there are a bunch of developed world government policies that deliberately constrict labor force participation. For example, in the US, we have subsidized student loans (encouraging people to go to school rather than get a job), prison (highest incarceration rates in the developed world), indefinite unemployment insurance payouts, disability, and Social Security payments (encouraging people to retire at a fixed age).
That results in lower supply of labor and higher costs for who does get hired. It also means yet another considerable incentive for US businesses to find ways to avoid employing people.
And all along you've been ignoring the elephant in the room, cheap global labor. Even with the relative decline in real wages of the developed world versus the developing world, it remains that a lot of jobs don't make sense to do in the developed world. If your labor is the sole source of your wealth and its value declines because there's so much more of it, then you will see a decline in your wealth.
Lots of people are employed. They just aren't getting employed in the developed world.
Unemployed people consume lots less than employed people.
[...]
Until the consumer class starts growing again demand will stay low and along with it labor force participation.
Wealth is not consumption. Short term economic activity need not lead to long term economic growth. We don't need a "consumer class", much less a growing one.
Do you really think we've all forgotten?
I don't know. Are you joking or serious? If serious, then I'll answer "a qualified yes, some of us apparently have forgotten".
And what's with using munitions that are radio-active, cue idiots claiming depleted uranium isn't dangerous.
Hi.
The point of using depleted uranium in armor piercing rounds is because it is dangerous enough to kill a heavily armored tank and its occupants with a direct, high velocity hit.
As to radiactivity, it's worth noting once again that the actual environmental risk from depleted uranium is due to its chemical toxicity.
What this says is that every rich person in this country is lying through their teeth about needing immigrants.
Because every rich person in the US has been complaining endlessly about not having enough particle physicists for their businesses. They just want those cheap injuns on aich won bees.
This isn't very amiable to the current "get rich quick" culture the Boomers are espousing as they approach their retirement.
Gotta fit a completely irrelevant bash on the Baby Boomers in. So Mommy and Daddy were bad people. Got it.
This is society reaching back and giving people who love science the middle finger.
You know, you could just do it yourself rather than depend on a middle finger-giving society. If a state of the art particle accelerator is too much for your personal finances, maybe you could find a bunch of people to chip in. A lot of the disease here is depending on society to fund your personal desires rather than doing them yourself.
Or perhaps they comprehend it just fine, but they make a choice you disagree with: Like after working a 10 hour shift for $7.25 an hour, they would like to have at least a small creature comfort, so they buy a six pack of beer (or soda), instead of going home and enjoying tasteless and bland tap-water. The thing about being poor that everyone forgets is that everything that might relieve the boredom and stress of long hours for little reward costs something. It's easy to say "I'll save a few dollars a day" when you've got a fat paycheck -- but when you have nothing and you're looking to those couple of dollars leftover in your wallet, it's hard to say "You don't exist, go away". But psychology aside, there's still the troubling issue of your really, really bad math skills.
Well, I'll just note here that for all the talk of the special financial qualities of a slashdotter, ranting on the internet (and playing games on your laptop) is cheaper and more entertaining than drinking beer/soda every day.
Bottom line here is that your assertion that saving the equivalent of three sodas a day ($4.50) can buy someone a college education is possible, but absurd.
That's over $1600 per year. If they threw that into a DRIP (Dividend ReInvestment Program) for a fairly stable company, they'd also probably would grow that money to an extent.
Also, I don't think a minimum wage should be livable in your sense. The problem here is that there's a lot of people who currently aren't worth current minimum wage and hence, aren't employed. So they get $0 per hour rather than $7.25 per hour. But an employer might be willing to take a chance on them, if the employee were paid, say, $3 per hour. Now, $3 per hour obviously isn't "livable" by your standard, but it is more than $0 per hour. But it seems a better approach to dealing with the unemployed than the usual tricks, like throwing them on disability (both the US and UK do this to some degree though apparently the UK has recently knocked a bunch of people off those rolls).