If I search for "Snopes DNC" the only thing that comes up is this. Can you post some specific links (with commentary if the links don't already have it)?
which is the pro-corporate, anti-worker arm of the Democratic party. CNN is just pro corporate. They don't care about parties one way or another. That leaves Fox News and the Local stations (unless you count stuff like Bloomberg which is as pro-corporate as it gets). The local stations are completely owned by an outfit called "Sinclair Media". Google "Sinclair Must Run" if you want an idea where their loyalties are.
What I'm saying is that it's not about balance between DNC and GOP. It's about pro-corporate and pro-worker. That's where the balance is skewed. If I want to hear a narrative that isn't 100% pro-corporate/anti-worker I've got to dig up YouTube channels like TYT and Secular Talk and maybe the BBC.
What we have here is a mainstream media that is moderately left wing on social issues (moderate, they only started openly supporting Gay Marriage when the polls changed in favor) and hard right on anything economic. There is no balance here whatsoever. Hell, Trump got $6 billion in free advertising from our Media. How much did Bernie get?
It's an old Soviet tactic that was borrowed and perfected by a GOP operative named Karl Rove. Take whatever your faults are and accuse your opponent of them. It puts them on the defensive and distracts from you and your problems. It wouldn't work if we had a media that wasn't owned lock, stock and barrel by mega corps but, well, we do.
huge amount of capital moving around to rebuild the shattered cities. A ton of ex-soldiers came home with a sense of entitlement and demanded better lives from their ruling class. And the cold war put the kibosh on outsourcing for a while.
The New Deal was working, but very, very slowly. Mostly because it wasn't enough. Band aid on a machete wound that. There was a _lot_ of pushback on it and a lot didn't get done. Think of Obamacare. Lousy program but better than nothing. As a progressive I'm all about progress. Something is always better than nothing. And positive action is better than doing zilch.
and when something doesn't work you take a step back, research and learn from your mistakes. In other words, you apply the scientific method.
If you want a fantastic example of what happens when you leave shit up to chance take the entire first half of the 19ths century. The Great Depression and both World Wars were basically people letting stuff happen.
Post Great Depression, for example, we heavily regulated banks and had no major crashes for decades. Then we started deregulating things and blamo, Savings and Loan scandals. Same thing happened with the 2008 crash where we let Main Street and Wall Street banks interact (we didn't used to). And then there's stock buy backs. They are absolutely wrecking our economy as businesses pour capital into them instead of investments. Pre-Reagan they were illegal market manipulation, now they're standard practice.
Yes, Human beings can solve our problems. If we couldn't we'd still be at the mercy of the elements. But the thing is, we have to try. And we can't just throw up our hands and say "Welp, that didn't work, I guess we'll never solve that". That kind of defeatism is what gets us the Dark Ages all over again. Thousands of years with no progress.
One site had a bunch of people say they weren't going to go see it. News hungry sites and YouTubers pounced on it like a dog on steak because the anti SJW crap gets clicks. We're all being played for ad revenue. It's pissing me off and I can't do anything about it except point out.
and ignoring your role in the large economy as a whole. That's why you think in terms of selling your labor and not in terms of your labor being bought.
As it stands your labor will generally decrease in value unless you're one of the top of the tops (e.g. a specialist surgeon or cryptography expert) because the investor class is well aware of the value of your labor and is always working to reduce it. Either through offshoring/onshoring (e.g. H1-Bs), flooding the market with new grads or Automation.
Economic growth can increase the value of your labor... to a point. That point is stops when the things I've listed above become bigger factors than the ability to make more money with extra workers. That's how wage growth happens. It's why the biggest wage increases happened after WWII. America was the only country left with a functioning infrastructure and manufacturing base, Unions were strong and fear of communism meant outsourcing wasn't a thing.
Those factors are gone. Unions are dead and the factories are automating or going over seas and the communists are more capitalist than most capitalists are (re: China).
As a result we've had massive downward pressure on wages even as the economy is the biggest and most profitable it's ever been.
At this point we've got plenty to go around, the only question is will we use public policy to guarantee a right to a decent life or will we slide into a new Dark Ages for 1000 years? I've made my decision, the question is what's yours? I think you can still be convinced.
the studies show that unemployment didn't increase when minimum wage went up. So yeah, I am answering your comment directly.
Also, we're at under 5% unemployment, which economists call "full employment". Now, I know damn well that number is bullshit because it includes a ton of 'gig' economy workers getting taken advantage of. But minimum wage increases help there too. The trouble we have is we've pushed too much money to the top. Not enough dollars are circulating in the economy. It's exactly what happened during the Dark Ages just on a smaller scale (so far).
The solution is higher minimum wages and perhaps a federal jobs program. I'm not entirely certain we need the jobs program, but I want it anyway. We need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and if we don't do something about climate change we're all going to die.
and there's always a problem, cats or not cats. A Raccoon is a surprisingly hardy animal and would make short work of a feral house cat.
Mice and Rats are generally easier to control than cats. For one thing they're not a cute so folks don't mind killing them. For another they'll mostly steer clear of human dwellings in cities. And finally you can put up some of these and they'll go away.
The folks who run these catch and release programs know what they're doing. We're not talking about indigenous species. These are feral house cats. In fact, getting rid of them has a benefit to the environment. They kill a _lot_ of birds which can lead to mosquito problems.
The study was intentionally misread to make the minimum wage increase look bad. What actually happened is a small number of newer workers were forced to get jobs outside Seattle in the suburbs and periphery where the wage increase didn't take place. Making the $15/minimum national would solve that, which is exactly why we have a national minimum wage.
because when poor people have money they spend it.
The reason why trickle _down_ doesn't work is that no matter how greedy you are there's only so many hours in the day to spend money, and only so many yachts to buy.
Give a rich man money and he sits on it to use it as a power broker tool to get what he wants. Give a poor man money and he spends it. Multiple studies have shown that demand side economics works. That a dollar given to a poor person circulates far, far more than even two given to a rich man.
The other way minimum wage "trickles up" is that it sets a floor nobody can fall below, reducing desperation. Desperate people will struggle. Most will collapse under the weight of those struggles, but a few will make it. Those few will compete with you for your jobs, putting pressure on your wages. The guy what would have been happy in life at $20/hr in a factory is now gunning for your $90k/yr job because that's what it takes to get by. Sure, he'll fail, but there's a million guys behind him. If even 1% make it into your industry you wages will go down.
Economic growth happens when productivity increases faster that population. This is exactly what's been happening. See here. We've doubled productivity while decreasing labor by 1/3.
The problem we have is that the increase is from automation. Meaning that it's machines, and not workers, adding the value right now. This means a worker cannot simply bargain for better pay anymore because the value of their labor isn't raising. It's the opposite. Automation is decreasing the value of labor. So we have more of everything but less to go around. Here's a much more succinct explanation of the phenomenon
TL;DR;You do not "run out" of money because economies grow. But without public policy to manage where that growth goes you end up with out of control inequality & robber barons. Exactly like we did pre-New Deal. Time for a New New Deal.
are these Job Creators making a better living who deserve a break? Because that's the narrative I keep hearing. If these Job Creators can't create good paying jobs then why do they deserve all the special privileges (low taxes, low regulation, extra say in public policy) that we've been giving them?
If the Job Creators filed to create jobs, isn't it time for a New Deal? That's what we did the last time, and it lead to the biggest prosperity humanity has ever seen.
On a side note, if you look into it you'll find most of those businesses you linked to are closing because they were ladened down with debt from venture capitalists who used leveraged buyouts to extract the money from successful businesses. Again, Job Creators at work.
This wasn't a minimum wage increase. Amazon increased their wages. If we'd done a federal increase then the workers could leave or go get second jobs and do just fine. If we did Medicare for All they wouldn't have to fear losing health benefits (and the employers wouldn't have to worry about paying for them).
Progressive policy works when it's not being actively sabotaged by bad actors.
and the problems go away. The trouble here is that this wasn't a minimum wage increase. It was a pay increase by Amazon.
I've pointed this out elsewhere on the thread, but either Amazon didn't increase payrolls and set their store managers up to fail or they did and the store manager is taking advantage of the situation to lower his wage costs in the hopes of netting a nice fat bonus.
In either case the solution is to fix the systemic problems at the top. To wit:
1. Raise Federal minimum wage so the employees can go find other work at the same pay.
2. Implement Medicare for All so employers no longer fear paying benefits just because they gave somebody 30hr/week.
As an added bonus you'll get a stronger economy from increased spending by low wage earners (who tend to spend 100% of their income), studies show you won't see inflation and you'll save $5 trillion every 10 years on healthcare while giving everyone access.
There is literally no reason not to do this except "I feel like I earn less when somebody earns more".
True story, a bud worked for a shitty call center that cut everybody's pay. This caused a ton of backlash so they company said that, as a reward for their years of good service, they would be starting new employees at $2/hr less than the existing employees.
and collect the cats, spay them, and let 'em go. I knew a gal who worked for a catch and release outfit funded by the local gov't and donations. Worked great at reducing feral cat populations in a humane way.
OTOH if you just leave it up to random chance or an imaginary free market you get bad outcomes. As always ask yourself this: When, in your lifetime, has the best answer to a complex problem been "leave it alone and hope it sorts itself out"?
TL;DR: raise federal minimum wage and the workers can quit and go elsewhere when a manager pulls this crap.
what the F happened to The Guardian? This is some crap reporting here. You went to press with nothing more than a few employees complaining about hours dropping? I'd expect that from Fox News since this fits their narrative and they'll print anything that does, but not from the Guardian.
I'm seeing a lot of left wing sites I used to read seemingly going to the right. Politico was always kind of establishment...ish but lately they're worse than MSNBC. I've even seen Vox get into the act. The only one that hasn't is Motherjones. Maybe Al-Jazeerez and the BBC but they're not left wing so much as balanced.
I'm wondering if they establishment types are getting scared of the progressive left and turning up the dial? Bernie's got a good shot at the presidency if the DNC doesn't cheat again and AOC is basically the face of the Democratic party at this point. Hell, there was a member of the House that called out AIPAC for Pete's sake and when they tried to shut her out the best they could do was pass a milktoast "anti-hate" resolution (for those wondering, the actual left wants the Israeli gov't to stop shitting all over the Palestinians so we can have actual peace while the Establishment among the Dems would like to keep soaking up the gravy train of campaign donations).
Either way as a Democrat it looks like the Establishment types are sweating, and that can't help but be a good thing for all of us.
so Amazon increased wages for the company they owned but didn't increase labor budget?
Something doesn't add up here. There's one of two possibilities.
a. Amazon didn't increase labor budgets, in which case raising their employees wages was a cynical PR stunt pulled specifically so they could then point to and say "See, we tried to help, but minimum wage just doesn't work".
b. Amazon _did_ increase labor budgets, in which case these are just asshat managers exploiting the raise to cut hours without taking the blame for it. If you've ever worked a low wage manager job you know your bonuses are tied to costs.
Either way somebody is blowing smoke up our asses.
the problem here is Minimum wage in Illinois (where the person interviewed is) is $8.25/hr and their boss knows it. That means they can't just quit and go find better work. This is exactly why minimum wage is Federal. Economies aren't tiny, local things.
I've pointed out elsewhere on the thread that the studies show actual minimum wage increases help workers. That includes that Seattle study that was originally misinterpreted.
it sets a floor you can't fall below. It says "If you work 40 hours a week you should be able to get by".
It also raises _your_ wages, because it increases job mobility on the low end and makes it less likely somebody at the low wage sector is going to start gunning for the next job up the pole, pushing wages down in that sector and causing a cascade effect that eventually hits your end.
An economy without worker protections is always, always a race to the bottom.
Slashdot Mirror
the Mueller investigation continues apace with multiple convictions and indictments. It's even profitable. And China-Gate is just getting started.
If I search for "Snopes DNC" the only thing that comes up is this. Can you post some specific links (with commentary if the links don't already have it)?
which is the pro-corporate, anti-worker arm of the Democratic party. CNN is just pro corporate. They don't care about parties one way or another. That leaves Fox News and the Local stations (unless you count stuff like Bloomberg which is as pro-corporate as it gets). The local stations are completely owned by an outfit called "Sinclair Media". Google "Sinclair Must Run" if you want an idea where their loyalties are.
What I'm saying is that it's not about balance between DNC and GOP. It's about pro-corporate and pro-worker. That's where the balance is skewed. If I want to hear a narrative that isn't 100% pro-corporate/anti-worker I've got to dig up YouTube channels like TYT and Secular Talk and maybe the BBC.
What we have here is a mainstream media that is moderately left wing on social issues (moderate, they only started openly supporting Gay Marriage when the polls changed in favor) and hard right on anything economic. There is no balance here whatsoever. Hell, Trump got $6 billion in free advertising from our Media. How much did Bernie get?
It's an old Soviet tactic that was borrowed and perfected by a GOP operative named Karl Rove. Take whatever your faults are and accuse your opponent of them. It puts them on the defensive and distracts from you and your problems. It wouldn't work if we had a media that wasn't owned lock, stock and barrel by mega corps but, well, we do.
You clicked. And you even commented. And you got modded up, meaning more clicks and even better, lots of user engagement.
/. does two things: Advertisement and User Generated content. Both rely on clicks. If you want this stuff to go away stop clicking on it.
huge amount of capital moving around to rebuild the shattered cities. A ton of ex-soldiers came home with a sense of entitlement and demanded better lives from their ruling class. And the cold war put the kibosh on outsourcing for a while.
The New Deal was working, but very, very slowly. Mostly because it wasn't enough. Band aid on a machete wound that. There was a _lot_ of pushback on it and a lot didn't get done. Think of Obamacare. Lousy program but better than nothing. As a progressive I'm all about progress. Something is always better than nothing. And positive action is better than doing zilch.
in the nerd community. It's almost as if do that was profitable...
Seriously, you'd be better off ignoring them when this crap comes up. You're getting played.
it was just bad. Apparently they tried to ad-lib most of it instead of having a script and that worked out about as well as you'd expect.
it's a space station.
and when something doesn't work you take a step back, research and learn from your mistakes. In other words, you apply the scientific method.
If you want a fantastic example of what happens when you leave shit up to chance take the entire first half of the 19ths century. The Great Depression and both World Wars were basically people letting stuff happen.
Post Great Depression, for example, we heavily regulated banks and had no major crashes for decades. Then we started deregulating things and blamo, Savings and Loan scandals. Same thing happened with the 2008 crash where we let Main Street and Wall Street banks interact (we didn't used to). And then there's stock buy backs. They are absolutely wrecking our economy as businesses pour capital into them instead of investments. Pre-Reagan they were illegal market manipulation, now they're standard practice.
Yes, Human beings can solve our problems. If we couldn't we'd still be at the mercy of the elements. But the thing is, we have to try. And we can't just throw up our hands and say "Welp, that didn't work, I guess we'll never solve that". That kind of defeatism is what gets us the Dark Ages all over again. Thousands of years with no progress.
One site had a bunch of people say they weren't going to go see it. News hungry sites and YouTubers pounced on it like a dog on steak because the anti SJW crap gets clicks. We're all being played for ad revenue. It's pissing me off and I can't do anything about it except point out.
and ignoring your role in the large economy as a whole. That's why you think in terms of selling your labor and not in terms of your labor being bought.
As it stands your labor will generally decrease in value unless you're one of the top of the tops (e.g. a specialist surgeon or cryptography expert) because the investor class is well aware of the value of your labor and is always working to reduce it. Either through offshoring/onshoring (e.g. H1-Bs), flooding the market with new grads or Automation.
Economic growth can increase the value of your labor... to a point. That point is stops when the things I've listed above become bigger factors than the ability to make more money with extra workers. That's how wage growth happens. It's why the biggest wage increases happened after WWII. America was the only country left with a functioning infrastructure and manufacturing base, Unions were strong and fear of communism meant outsourcing wasn't a thing.
Those factors are gone. Unions are dead and the factories are automating or going over seas and the communists are more capitalist than most capitalists are (re: China).
As a result we've had massive downward pressure on wages even as the economy is the biggest and most profitable it's ever been.
At this point we've got plenty to go around, the only question is will we use public policy to guarantee a right to a decent life or will we slide into a new Dark Ages for 1000 years? I've made my decision, the question is what's yours? I think you can still be convinced.
the studies show that unemployment didn't increase when minimum wage went up. So yeah, I am answering your comment directly.
Also, we're at under 5% unemployment, which economists call "full employment". Now, I know damn well that number is bullshit because it includes a ton of 'gig' economy workers getting taken advantage of. But minimum wage increases help there too. The trouble we have is we've pushed too much money to the top. Not enough dollars are circulating in the economy. It's exactly what happened during the Dark Ages just on a smaller scale (so far).
The solution is higher minimum wages and perhaps a federal jobs program. I'm not entirely certain we need the jobs program, but I want it anyway. We need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and if we don't do something about climate change we're all going to die.
and there's always a problem, cats or not cats. A Raccoon is a surprisingly hardy animal and would make short work of a feral house cat.
Mice and Rats are generally easier to control than cats. For one thing they're not a cute so folks don't mind killing them. For another they'll mostly steer clear of human dwellings in cities. And finally you can put up some of these and they'll go away.
The folks who run these catch and release programs know what they're doing. We're not talking about indigenous species. These are feral house cats. In fact, getting rid of them has a benefit to the environment. They kill a _lot_ of birds which can lead to mosquito problems.
See my other post here.
The study was intentionally misread to make the minimum wage increase look bad. What actually happened is a small number of newer workers were forced to get jobs outside Seattle in the suburbs and periphery where the wage increase didn't take place. Making the $15/minimum national would solve that, which is exactly why we have a national minimum wage.
because when poor people have money they spend it.
The reason why trickle _down_ doesn't work is that no matter how greedy you are there's only so many hours in the day to spend money, and only so many yachts to buy.
Give a rich man money and he sits on it to use it as a power broker tool to get what he wants. Give a poor man money and he spends it. Multiple studies have shown that demand side economics works. That a dollar given to a poor person circulates far, far more than even two given to a rich man.
The other way minimum wage "trickles up" is that it sets a floor nobody can fall below, reducing desperation. Desperate people will struggle. Most will collapse under the weight of those struggles, but a few will make it. Those few will compete with you for your jobs, putting pressure on your wages. The guy what would have been happy in life at $20/hr in a factory is now gunning for your $90k/yr job because that's what it takes to get by. Sure, he'll fail, but there's a million guys behind him. If even 1% make it into your industry you wages will go down.
Economic growth happens when productivity increases faster that population. This is exactly what's been happening. See here. We've doubled productivity while decreasing labor by 1/3.
The problem we have is that the increase is from automation. Meaning that it's machines, and not workers, adding the value right now. This means a worker cannot simply bargain for better pay anymore because the value of their labor isn't raising. It's the opposite. Automation is decreasing the value of labor. So we have more of everything but less to go around. Here's a much more succinct explanation of the phenomenon
TL;DR;You do not "run out" of money because economies grow. But without public policy to manage where that growth goes you end up with out of control inequality & robber barons. Exactly like we did pre-New Deal. Time for a New New Deal.
are these Job Creators making a better living who deserve a break? Because that's the narrative I keep hearing. If these Job Creators can't create good paying jobs then why do they deserve all the special privileges (low taxes, low regulation, extra say in public policy) that we've been giving them?
If the Job Creators filed to create jobs, isn't it time for a New Deal? That's what we did the last time, and it lead to the biggest prosperity humanity has ever seen.
On a side note, if you look into it you'll find most of those businesses you linked to are closing because they were ladened down with debt from venture capitalists who used leveraged buyouts to extract the money from successful businesses. Again, Job Creators at work.
We are not
This wasn't a minimum wage increase. Amazon increased their wages. If we'd done a federal increase then the workers could leave or go get second jobs and do just fine. If we did Medicare for All they wouldn't have to fear losing health benefits (and the employers wouldn't have to worry about paying for them).
Progressive policy works when it's not being actively sabotaged by bad actors.
and the problems go away. The trouble here is that this wasn't a minimum wage increase. It was a pay increase by Amazon.
I've pointed this out elsewhere on the thread, but either Amazon didn't increase payrolls and set their store managers up to fail or they did and the store manager is taking advantage of the situation to lower his wage costs in the hopes of netting a nice fat bonus.
In either case the solution is to fix the systemic problems at the top. To wit:
1. Raise Federal minimum wage so the employees can go find other work at the same pay.
2. Implement Medicare for All so employers no longer fear paying benefits just because they gave somebody 30hr/week.
As an added bonus you'll get a stronger economy from increased spending by low wage earners (who tend to spend 100% of their income), studies show you won't see inflation and you'll save $5 trillion every 10 years on healthcare while giving everyone access.
There is literally no reason not to do this except "I feel like I earn less when somebody earns more".
True story, a bud worked for a shitty call center that cut everybody's pay. This caused a ton of backlash so they company said that, as a reward for their years of good service, they would be starting new employees at $2/hr less than the existing employees.
and collect the cats, spay them, and let 'em go. I knew a gal who worked for a catch and release outfit funded by the local gov't and donations. Worked great at reducing feral cat populations in a humane way.
OTOH if you just leave it up to random chance or an imaginary free market you get bad outcomes. As always ask yourself this: When, in your lifetime, has the best answer to a complex problem been "leave it alone and hope it sorts itself out"?
TL;DR: raise federal minimum wage and the workers can quit and go elsewhere when a manager pulls this crap.
what the F happened to The Guardian? This is some crap reporting here. You went to press with nothing more than a few employees complaining about hours dropping? I'd expect that from Fox News since this fits their narrative and they'll print anything that does, but not from the Guardian.
I'm seeing a lot of left wing sites I used to read seemingly going to the right. Politico was always kind of establishment...ish but lately they're worse than MSNBC. I've even seen Vox get into the act. The only one that hasn't is Motherjones. Maybe Al-Jazeerez and the BBC but they're not left wing so much as balanced.
I'm wondering if they establishment types are getting scared of the progressive left and turning up the dial? Bernie's got a good shot at the presidency if the DNC doesn't cheat again and AOC is basically the face of the Democratic party at this point. Hell, there was a member of the House that called out AIPAC for Pete's sake and when they tried to shut her out the best they could do was pass a milktoast "anti-hate" resolution (for those wondering, the actual left wants the Israeli gov't to stop shitting all over the Palestinians so we can have actual peace while the Establishment among the Dems would like to keep soaking up the gravy train of campaign donations).
Either way as a Democrat it looks like the Establishment types are sweating, and that can't help but be a good thing for all of us.
so Amazon increased wages for the company they owned but didn't increase labor budget?
Something doesn't add up here. There's one of two possibilities.
a. Amazon didn't increase labor budgets, in which case raising their employees wages was a cynical PR stunt pulled specifically so they could then point to and say "See, we tried to help, but minimum wage just doesn't work".
b. Amazon _did_ increase labor budgets, in which case these are just asshat managers exploiting the raise to cut hours without taking the blame for it. If you've ever worked a low wage manager job you know your bonuses are tied to costs.
Either way somebody is blowing smoke up our asses.
the problem here is Minimum wage in Illinois (where the person interviewed is) is $8.25/hr and their boss knows it. That means they can't just quit and go find better work. This is exactly why minimum wage is Federal. Economies aren't tiny, local things.
I've pointed out elsewhere on the thread that the studies show actual minimum wage increases help workers. That includes that Seattle study that was originally misinterpreted.
it sets a floor you can't fall below. It says "If you work 40 hours a week you should be able to get by".
It also raises _your_ wages, because it increases job mobility on the low end and makes it less likely somebody at the low wage sector is going to start gunning for the next job up the pole, pushing wages down in that sector and causing a cascade effect that eventually hits your end.
An economy without worker protections is always, always a race to the bottom.