Minimum wage increase revisited

[fabulouslyghetto]

My privileged ass has no clue.

Should a doctor or a lawyer, or an engineer make more than a fry cook? Should we just divvy up the money and divide it equally regardless of a persons abilities? Pay enough to low wage entry level workers and see who moves on, why study and work hard if you make no more them a fast food worker?

Ahh, my favorite diversion tactic, take a sensible statement or idea and expand it beyond all reason [or recognition]

There's a mile-wide gap between "pay people a livable wage" and "fry cooks should make as much as a neurosurgeon astronaut who speaks ten languages and reinvented the wheel."

try that on someone who hasn't been around the block a time or two hun

 

[Sausy]

Do blue collar or service workers work any less harder than the professionals? Fuck it all, everyone who works for a living deserves the basics... a decent apartment, health care that doesn't bankrupt them.. enough to pay the bills, save a bit. Not a first class life, but a dignified life. The work ethic is garbage...life shouldn't be about slavery to work over family and expanding one's horizons. Work is fine, people should have a way to make a living, but work doesn't define us, living life and doing whatever we can for our ourselves and our families to take advantage of the possibilities of living matter most... because you can't take it with you when you go.


So many people worked their asses to death...as industrial workers, as slaves...and saw a pittance. We better revise our thinking of what work means in this era... rise above the old ways of thinking. Because in this era of automation, we better start thinking about humanity and people's right to a decent life for once. Because the powers that be will even have robotics to fix broken robotics if it saves enough money if given the opportunity. I actually read articles that talked up how in the end it would be good to have more automation... free us from the most monotonous jobs, or better yet the dangerous ones. But we are living in a time where the possibilities of a good life for millions of Americans are evaporating, even with the current economic recovery... and have been fading since the 80s and 90s.

I wish I had the intelligence and coherence to help push this forward. I think though there are many who can, and they must be supported and their voices amplified to get heard and start to make a positive difference. Not expecting miracles, maybe a fool for thinking optimism possible... but surely we can and must do better as a society. Or we will witness, in the lifetime of most here, our failure as a nation. Make America great again? The idea of America has great potential... but let's be serious here. We have the worst health care system in the developed world.... a badly overburdened , aging infrastructure... our mass transit system overall is also poor compared to others. We cannot fairly speak even to human rights, as we fall far short of our lofty rhetoric and vision(though Trump doesn't even begin to try). Let's start to make the hype of greatness the reality, because truthfully hype is all it has been for the most part.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Do blue collar or service workers work any less harder than the professionals? Fuck it all, everyone who works for a living deserves the basics... a decent apartment, health care that doesn't bankrupt them.. enough to pay the bills, save a bit. Not a first class life, but a dignified life. The work ethic is garbage...life shouldn't be about slavery to work over family and expanding one's horizons. Work is fine, people should have a way to make a living, but work doesn't define us, living life and doing whatever we can for our ourselves and our families to take advantage of the possibilities of living matter most... because you can't take it with you when you go.


So many people worked their asses to death...as industrial workers, as slaves...and saw a pittance. We better revise our thinking of what work means in this era... rise above the old ways of thinking. Because in this era of automation, we better start thinking about humanity and people's right to a decent life for once. Because the powers that be will even have robotics to fix broken robotics if it saves enough money if given the opportunity. I actually read articles that talked up how in the end it would be good to have more automation... free us from the most monotonous jobs, or better yet the dangerous ones. But we are living in a time where the possibilities of a good life for millions of Americans are evaporating, even with the current economic recovery... and have been fading since the 80s and 90s.

I wish I had the intelligence and coherence to help push this forward. I think though there are many who can, and they must be supported and their voices amplified to get heard and start to make a positive difference. Not expecting miracles, maybe a fool for thinking optimism possible... but surely we can and must do better as a society. Or we will witness, in the lifetime of most here, our failure as a nation. Make America great again? The idea of America has great potential... but let's be serious here. We have the worst health care system in the developed world.... a badly overburdened , aging infrastructure... our mass transit system overall is also poor compared to others. We cannot fairly speak even to human rights, as we fall far short of our lofty rhetoric and vision(though Trump doesn't even begin to try). Let's start to make the hype of greatness the reality, because truthfully hype is all it has been for the most part.

 

[peeonme]

]Minimum wage should be enough for a person to live on[/B].

And it only strengthens the entire economy when this happens.

Creating an underclass is a dead end for a healthy economy.

I have said this in this same forum and in HT many times, 'TO LIVE ON', it should keep a roof over one's head, food in the kitchen and clothes on our back. Health care should be national and provided for all. If a person has no desire to better themselves I have no problem with that, just be prepared for a minimalist life style.

 

[peeonme]

Peon and I had an intense debate not too long ago. I was against increasing the min wage while he was all for it.

I have changed my position. I now don't care whether it gets increased to 15 or 20. My position regarding poor people remains the same. Poor people are not poor because the minimum wage is too low. They are poor because they do not have the skills and drive to not be poor. We can raise the minimum wage to $20/hour. Their thought process will remain the same: have lots of babies, buy crap they don't need and get into debt, stay in bad neighborhoods, never aiming to buy a home, etc.

So, Peon, I have conceded to this point. Say we increase the min wage to $20/hr. This distraction is removed. Now what. What do you propose the next step we should take to help lift people out of poverty.

I just wanted to thank you for dragging me in to this shit thread, somehow I am a villain to the SJW's because I am for an increase in minimum wage. You wanted to debate it, again, where the hell are you? I am now thinking peon was no mistake.

 

[rareboy]

Do blue collar or service workers work any less harder than the professionals? Fuck it all, everyone who works for a living deserves the basics... a decent apartment, health care that doesn't bankrupt them.. enough to pay the bills, save a bit. Not a first class life, but a dignified life. The work ethic is garbage...life shouldn't be about slavery to work over family and expanding one's horizons. Work is fine, people should have a way to make a living, but work doesn't define us, living life and doing whatever we can for our ourselves and our families to take advantage of the possibilities of living matter most... because you can't take it with you when you go.


So many people worked their asses to death...as industrial workers, as slaves...and saw a pittance. We better revise our thinking of what work means in this era... rise above the old ways of thinking. Because in this era of automation, we better start thinking about humanity and people's right to a decent life for once. Because the powers that be will even have robotics to fix broken robotics if it saves enough money if given the opportunity. I actually read articles that talked up how in the end it would be good to have more automation... free us from the most monotonous jobs, or better yet the dangerous ones. But we are living in a time where the possibilities of a good life for millions of Americans are evaporating, even with the current economic recovery... and have been fading since the 80s and 90s.

I wish I had the intelligence and coherence to help push this forward. I think though there are many who can, and they must be supported and their voices amplified to get heard and start to make a positive difference. Not expecting miracles, maybe a fool for thinking optimism possible... but surely we can and must do better as a society. Or we will witness, in the lifetime of most here, our failure as a nation. Make America great again? The idea of America has great potential... but let's be serious here. We have the worst health care system in the developed world.... a badly overburdened , aging infrastructure... our mass transit system overall is also poor compared to others. We cannot fairly speak even to human rights, as we fall far short of our lofty rhetoric and vision(though Trump doesn't even begin to try). Let's start to make the hype of greatness the reality, because truthfully hype is all it has been for the most part.

Quoted for emphasis.

I would also note that it generally is not the professional class who has an issue with giving people a livable minimum wage.

It often seems that it is the blue collar folk who don't want to see a fry cook making half as much as they do putting tractors together or standing around watching roads being paved.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

I just wanted to thank you for dragging me in to this shit thread, somehow I am a villain to the SJW's because I am for an increase in minimum wage. You wanted to debate it, again, where the hell are you? I am now thinking peon was no mistake.

It might have something to do with the gross way you talk about the poor. You literally cannot construct a sentence about the lower class without some kind of reference to their laziness or wanting to live on welfare or just not having the drive to succeed and you continuously use your own story to prop yourself up like some kind of standard they should all be TRYING to reach, but of course they don't and won't cuz they want everything handed to them.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Quoted for emphasis.

I would also note that it generally is not the professional class who has an issue with giving people a livable minimum wage.

It often seems that it is the blue collar folk who don't want to see a fry cook making half as much as they do putting tractors together or standing around watching roads being paved.

If I'm not mistaken didn't this class war start with Reagan and his "welfare queen" propoganda? The American dream is supposed to be about prosperity but when people ask for the mere opportunity to achieve the basics-- food, shelter, house, healthcare, suddenly the name of the game is it's their own job to get blood from a stone and if the can't it's cuz they didn't squeeze as hard as the billionaires. It's insulting on multiple levels-- insulting to the lower class, insulting to our intelligence to dismiss the struggles of poverty with cutesy platitudes and pseudo-inspirational horseshit about "You can achieve" and "Just try" and whatever other slogans a personal trainer is likely to shout into the ear of a new client.

 

[peeonme]

It might have something to do with the gross way you talk about the poor. You literally cannot construct a sentence about the lower class without some kind of reference to their laziness or wanting to live on welfare or just not having the drive to succeed and you continuously use your own story to prop yourself up like some kind of standard they should all be TRYING to reach, but of course they don't and won't cuz they want everything handed to them.

Do you have a reference, or is this another half assed accusation?

 

[frankfrank]

I've pretty much retired. I will work when requested a few days a week, and I am glad my 18 years of experience are valued.
But a $15/hour minimum wage would give me a raise.

You do some pretty responsible work, too! There's really no reason you shouldn't be getting at least in the $20s per hour.

Yes it most certainly was.

https://www.thebillfold.com/2015/07...-always-supposed-to-be-a-living-wag[/COLOR]e/

As a baby-boomer (and one of the early ones, at that), I remember nearly all of my schoolmates - if the topic ever came up - had ONE parent who worked ONE job, and the other parent stayed at home. Furthermore, most of these parents OWNED houses. The minimum wage might not have been quite a living wage by the middle 60s, but the "living wage" wasn't much more than the minimum.

By the middle or late 70s, I was aware of nearly no parents, anywhere, with the ability for one parent to stay at home and raise the family.

I've often considered that change to have caused the decline of the family more than any other factor.

Minimum wage should be enough for a person to live on.

And it only strengthens the entire economy when this happens.

Creating an underclass is a dead end for a healthy economy.

The lack of a living minimum wage is a solid WHACK to the health of the economy. I recently read somewhere that the minimum wage is not enough to LIVE SOMEWHERE, anywhere in the United States, with rents utterly crazy and real estate prices even worse.

Having a barbaric health care system where very few people can afford preventative care, is creating an unhealthy population - which is a second WHACK on the economy.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

You do some pretty responsible work, too! There's really no reason you shouldn't be getting at least in the $20s per hour.


As a baby-boomer (and one of the early ones, at that), I remember nearly all of my schoolmates - if the topic ever came up - had ONE parent who worked ONE job, and the other parent stayed at home. Furthermore, most of these parents OWNED houses. The minimum wage might not have been quite a living wage by the middle 60s, but the "living wage" wasn't much more than the minimum.

By the middle or late 70s, I was aware of nearly no parents, anywhere, with the ability for one parent to stay at home and raise the family.

I've often considered that change to have caused the decline of the family more than any other factor.


The lack of a living minimum wage is a solid WHACK to the health of the economy. I recently read somewhere that the minimum wage is not enough to LIVE SOMEWHERE, anywhere in the United States, with rents utterly crazy and real estate prices even worse.

Having a barbaric health care system where very few people can afford preventative care, is creating an unhealthy population - which is a second WHACK on the economy.

Frank I could count on you to acknowledge that even if we ignore the moral aspect of this, it's not socially healthy to have masses of people who just can't afford to live, literally.

 

[peeonme]

It might have something to do with the gross way you talk about the poor. You literally cannot construct a sentence about the lower class without some kind of reference to their laziness or wanting to live on welfare or just not having the drive to succeed and you continuously use your own story to prop yourself up like some kind of standard they should all be TRYING to reach, but of course they don't and won't cuz they want everything handed to them.

What a fucking lie! Who is the 'lower class'? 2 of us make it on 30,000 a year, yes some people are lazy. Lazy pot head ass holes who want everything handed to them. Yes, I believe in work. I believe in a person applying themselves and I fucking believe in a
living wage.

Now stop the fucking lies.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

What a fucking lie! Who is the 'lower class'? 2 of us make it on 30,000 a year, yes some people are lazy. Lazy pot head ass holes who want everything handed to them. Yes, I believe in work. I believe in a person applying themselves and I fucking believe in a
living wage.

Now stop the fucking lies.

I'm going to ignore the undertones of "lazy pothead asshole who want everything handed to them" cuz I'm already dealing with a bf mini-crisis. The problem is you're selling a tray of horse shit as chocolate mousse. This mess about laziness and hard work is insulting. no one here is advocating that we just freely give money away to people who aren't willing to work for themselves, and for that matter I don't know why you keep INSISTING that the lower class aren't some of the hardest working people you'll ever meet. They put in long hours, go to school, raise their kids and live life without the help of a nanny, caretaker, personal assistant, personal physician, dietician et cetera. They break their back for pennies so the Ceo sitting in an air-conditioned office playing golf with a balled up invoie and a styrofoam cup can bring him another million for his.... ?hard work?

This fantasy you have that anybody oh anybody who wants it and will work for it can get it is not only idealistic, it defies long-documented trends. If wealth were truly a manner of work ethic there would be a consistent pattern of people jumping either from the top tax bracket to the bottom or from the bottom to the top, all based on their... "work ethic." But that isn't what happens. The trend you can set your watch to is born poor/die poor, born rich/die rich. Yall like to point to Steve Jobs and the four or five other people who came up from the bottom to become kazillionaires as if that's a realistic expectation for everyone.

THIS is why millennials are disillusioned, because the truth is you can work your fingers to the bone and die broke, or you can never lift a finger and be buried in a diamond encrusted coffin and it will have fuck-all to do with how hard you worked but yall keep gassing their heads up with this phoney bologna lie about wealth and income being directly related to how hard you do or don't work.

Now, of course, you're going to take this as a dismissal of personal accountability and denouncement of hard work as meaningless, doesn't change the fact that this story you sellin about poverty being a result of pure laziness instead of a mixture of that and sincere and concerted effort by the elite to hoard wealth is just.... silly.

"But I blah blah blah," "But I was born in the middle of a tornado and lived off of cereal and crackers for 17 years and I blah blah blah turned out just fine blah blah blah"

Right, because one's own personal experience = empirical data

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Do you have a reference, or is this another half assed accusation?

ummm every single post you've ever written about minimum wage? find me ten that don't have some sort of reference to "lazy potheads who want handouts" and don't think I don't know who you're talking about when you say that.

 

[peeonme]

ummm every single post you've ever written about minimum wage? find me ten that don't have some sort of reference to "lazy potheads who want handouts" and don't think I don't know who you're talking about when you say that.

I take some pleasure in that, sunshine

 

[peeonme]

I'm going to ignore the undertones of "lazy pothead asshole who want everything handed to them" cuz I'm already dealing with a bf mini-crisis. The problem is you're selling a tray of horse shit as chocolate mousse. This mess about laziness and hard work is insulting. no one here is advocating that we just freely give money away to people who aren't willing to work for themselves, and for that matter I don't know why you keep INSISTING that the lower class aren't some of the hardest working people you'll ever meet. They put in long hours, go to school, raise their kids and live life without the help of a nanny, caretaker, personal assistant, personal physician, dietician et cetera. They break their back for pennies so the Ceo sitting in an air-conditioned office playing golf with a balled up invoie and a styrofoam cup can bring him another million for his.... ?hard work?

This fantasy you have that anybody oh anybody who wants it and will work for it can get it is not only idealistic, it defies long-documented trends. If wealth were truly a manner of work ethic there would be a consistent pattern of people jumping either from the top tax bracket to the bottom or from the bottom to the top, all based on their... "work ethic." But that isn't what happens. The trend you can set your watch to is born poor/die poor, born rich/die rich. Yall like to point to Steve Jobs and the four or five other people who came up from the bottom to become kazillionaires as if that's a realistic expectation for everyone.

THIS is why millennials are disillusioned, because the truth is you can work your fingers to the bone and die broke, or you can never lift a finger and be buried in a diamond encrusted coffin and it will have fuck-all to do with how hard you worked but yall keep gassing their heads up with this phoney bologna lie about wealth and income being directly related to how hard you do or don't work.

Now, of course, you're going to take this as a dismissal of personal accountability and denouncement of hard work as meaningless, doesn't change the fact that this story you sellin about poverty being a result of pure laziness instead of a mixture of that and sincere and concerted effort by the elite to hoard wealth is just.... silly.

"But I blah blah blah," "But I was born in the middle of a tornado and lived off of cereal and crackers for 17 years and I blah blah blah turned out just fine blah blah blah"

Right, because one's own personal experience = empirical data

I had to give this some deep thought, you make some very good points. I want to apologize, I have no right to expect you to be able to do as I have done. It was wrong of me to imply that we are equal, forgive me. The liberals are right, you can't do it without them, they will help you, be patient, but, what ever you do, don't try, failure then is no option.

 

[Dominus]

Reply from me coming later tonight I promise. I type most replies on my phone, but this thread warrants more thoughtful means, like sitting down with an actual computer. Doing house work now. Will type up response when we wind down tonight.

I apologize to peonme.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

I had to give this some deep thought, you make some very good points. I want to apologize, I have no right to expect you to be able to do as I have done. It was wrong of me to imply that we are equal, forgive me. The liberals are right, you can't do it without them, they will help you, be patient, but, what ever you do, don't try, failure then is no option.

Chill, you've been scaling back on the racism lately but it's staring to creep back in with this "lazy incapable black people" subtext. Me saying that I know who you're talking about wasn't a green light for you to openly start talking about it.

 

[Alnitak]

My privileged ass has no clue.

Should a doctor or a lawyer, or an engineer make more than a fry cook? Should we just divvy up the money and divide it equally regardless of a persons abilities? Pay enough to low wage entry level workers and see who moves on, why study and work hard if you make no more them a fast food worker?

Doctors are considered poor by the 1%.

 

[peeonme]

Doctors are considered poor by the 1%.

I don't think about the 1%, most wages or income are market driven based upon demand for the skills of the wage earner. If we have a job that a person off of the street can learn in 1/2 an hour it will not pay the same as a position that requires extensive training.
I am all for paying a person enough to live on, we need to set the minimum wage high enough so that the worker doesn't qualify for government assistance.